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ANGOLA – As a contaminant seeped from a former brass foundry toward a city well, officials scrambled to implement a plan to clean up the site.
Now money has been secured to permanently eliminate the contaminant.
The current property owner, Univertical, which employs about 75, has promised to remain in the city for eight years.
Univertical Chief Executive Officer W. Chuck Walker attended a news conference Tuesday held by city officials and Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller.
The attorney general’s office led negotiations to resolve long-standing environmental claims by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management against Dana Corp.
“When you pollute your groundwater, you’ve got a contamination that will be generations old,” Zoeller said during the conference.
The cost of cleaning up the chlorinated solvent will be shared by the city, the county and Univertical. Angola Mayor Richard Hickman said the city borrowed $3.5 million in a no-interest loan from the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
The county and Univertical have paid $1 million each toward the cleanup. The county’s portion came from money the county received after the Indiana Toll Road was leased to a foreign consortium.
City officials passed a sewer rate increase in August to help pay for the cleanup and for sewer improvements. Beginning this month, sewer customers who use 5,000 gallons a month saw their monthly bills increase by about $3.
Although the exact cost of the cleanup isn’t known, Hickman said officials believe it will be less than the original $5.5 million estimate. The city will seek bids for the project in January, Hickman said.
Dana operated a brass foundry at the Weatherhead Street site until 1993. Cleanup was complicated when Dana filed bankruptcy in 2006 and claimed it no longer would operate a failing hydraulic system it had been using to prevent more contamination from seeping into the city’s water supply.
Dana also was no longer responsible for cleanup costs, which were expected to fall to Univertical Corp., a copper mill and chemical manufacturing company. Univertical officials had said they would likely be forced to move out of state if forced to shoulder the entire cost to clean the site.
State officials knew Dana would provide about 300,000 shares of its stock toward cleanup costs after it emerged from bankruptcy. But when work began on the current plan, that stock was worth less than $1 a share. Now state officials said the total stock value is worth about $2 million.
“When we shook hands on this, it (a share) was worth 19 cents,” Hickman said.
After Dana emerged from bankruptcy, Walker said its stock value increased. As of Tuesday, it was worth about $6.95 a share, he said. Univertical received 50,000 shares of the Dana stock, and Walker said he expects it will continue to grow in value, allowing his company to recoup cleanup costs.
Angola will receive the remaining shares of stock.
A city well is about 600 feet from the former Dana site. Water tests conducted late last year and this spring detected a small amount of the contaminant, though not in sufficient quantity to pose a hazard to water users.
