Word: cleanups
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...caused many landlords to fence in and lock up sites, has loosened its regulatory oversight since 1995. While developers could technically still be held liable for past contamination, nonlitigation agreements between Washington and 16 states--including Texas--are a wink and a nod by the feds to encourage the cleanup of sites with lesser contamination. "If we can provide Superfund liability relief to people who clean up and redevelop brownfields, we will encourage more cleanup throughout the private sector," EPA boss Christine Todd Whitman told TIME. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed brownfield legislation with liability relief last April...
...behind the Dallas arena and Victory cleanup is Ross Perot Jr., 42, CEO of Hillwood Development Co. and son of the former presidential hopeful. Perot rammed the project through a fractious Dallas political scene, getting the EPA and Texas regulators onboard even before taxpayers in 1998 approved (by just 1,642 votes out of 125,000) a tourist tax to raise $125 million for the planned $225 million arena. The price tag soared to $420 million thanks to such amenities as recessed lighting, terrazzo mosaic floors, barbecue grills and ramps graded for easy elephant access. "We got carried away," Perot...
...Victory cleanup, by comparison, was dirt cheap: $12 million for the one-mile-long site that will house the arena and 8 million sq. ft. of apartments, offices, stores and entertainment. The scrub was difficult, involving 25-plus parcels of land with virtually no records on possible contaminants. To complicate matters, 40% of downtown Dallas' electricity and all its natural-gas lines ran through the property. No one knew that 10 acres of incinerated junk--the charred remains of everything from hospital bedpans to whiskey bottles--lay buried beneath the surface...
...hydrocarbons (think of the charred stuff left on your barbecue grill). In all, Victory developers moved 750,000 cu. yds. of dirt, with nearly half so hopelessly "dirty" that it was carted away in 15,000 huge truckloads. Because previous landowners like Union Pacific were paying some of the cleanup costs, accountants had to track each spadeful...
...Well, almost. The EPA did announce one substantive change to the original Clinton plan: the dredging will now be carried out in phases, with government scientists (and, likely, GOP pollsters) evaluating at each step whether the cleanup is an effort worth its while. In other words, Bush and Whitman will have plenty of opportunities to back off from this fight in the years ahead. But for now, the Bush team took one look at the alternative - headlines like "Bush Lets Big Corporation Off Hook On River Cleanup" - and laced up its gloves...