Notes from the meeting held on Tuesday, December 12, 2000

5^th Floor Planning Department Conference Room

Edwin L. Crawford County Office Building

Present: Stacy Merola, Tom Evans, Frank Evangelisti, Ron Brink, Ken Kamlet, Chris Engler, Paul Thompson, Chip McElwee. Guest Experts: Chris Wood (NYSEG, EDC), Susan Cummins (GeoLogic), Bob Murphy (O’Connor, Gacioch), Tom Suozzo (DEC).

1. The meeting convened at 4:34 p.m.

2. Election of Subcommittee Chair: Stacy requested that the Subcommittee select a Chair. Ken Kamlet was duly nominated, seconded, and elected by consensus. (There were no dimpled chads.)

3. Additional Subcommittee Invitees: Stacy reported on other relevant agencies she had invited to participate in the Subcommittee’s activities. These included: Empire State Development (Bob Sweet?); IDA (Dick D’Attilio); Southern Tier East Regional Planning (Dick McCormick); EDZ (Joyce Thornton); Town of Union (Maureen Kimball?); City of Binghamton (?); and Broome Local Development Corporation (?).

4. Revolving Loan Fund Grant: Frank Evangelisti reported that the County has decided to apply for this EPA grant (application deadline is December 18^th). A final decision has not yet been made as to whether to apply for a full $1 million grant or for a lesser amount. (The City of Rochester which has received previous EPA brownfields pilot grants received only $500,000 under this program.) The application will be submitted on behalf of Broome County, the Town of Union, and the City of Binghamton, but will encompass brownfield sites throughout the County. The IDA has agreed to manage the grant. The Department of Health (Environmental Health Division) will serve as the brownfield site manager. Frank has developed a draft of the application package. Still to be resolved is how to structure loans under the grant—as bridge loans, gap financing, etc. Letters of endorsement have been solicited. Tom Suozzo agreed to ask the DEC regional administrator (Ken Lynch) to write a letter of support. Although relatively few such grants have been awarded to New York State localities (or to other localities within EPA Region 2) that could cut both ways. On the one hand, it could make EPA especially eager to make an award in this part of the country. On the other hand, New York State localities may be at a disadvantage because New York (unlike most other States) does not yet have State brownfields legislation.

5. Work Force Investment Board grants: Chris Wood informed the group that he had met with Congressman Hinchey to discuss a Federal grant program for work force development. Chris noted the importance of working with local Members of Congress in pursuing Federal grant opportunities.

6. Sources of Information on Potential Brownfield Properties: Members reported on the results of information-gathering efforts following the November meeting.

a) Frank Evangelisti: Obtained databases on available properties from the Town of Union (the database is “a little messed up” and needs to be refined), the City of Binghamton, and the IDA. Some of the data are sensitive, so should not be disseminated.

b) Bob Murphy: Brought in a looseleaf binder listing 91 City of Binghamton tax delinquent properties that were the subject of a December 7^th tax sale. Many of these properties were sold—subject to Board of Estimate confirmation. These included the Philadelphia Sales site. Each listing in the notebook includes a photo and descriptive information. Bob agreed to leave the notebook with Stacy for copying. Three sites were excluded from the sale because of contamination and liability concerns. These were: Almy Brothers site (Jackson Street); 93 Main Street (City entered into a Voluntary Cleanup Agreement with DEC; now being addressed under State Superfund); and Emma Street site (former Wilson Instruments site; 90,000-SF; no site investigation; partial recovery system in place?; some link to the Joint Sewage Treatment system?). The City Assessor has primary responsibility for screening sites for the City in terms of potential liability exposure. Mark Mennoya (sp?) in the Tax Department is a key player in this regard. It was pointed out that one of the useful roles that could be played by this Subcommittee is to determine what criteria are currently employed by local governments to exclude sites from tax foreclosures. Perhaps we can suggest some guidelines that would be useful to the County and local governments.

c) Chip McElwee: Brought in a Wellhead Protection report prepared by the Southern Tier East Regional Planning Board in the Summer of 1994. This report lists 344 sites with well contamination potential (based on the presence of oil or hazardous substances). Each site was mapped. Chip indicated that this information was incorporated in the County Health Department’s database. Ken Kamlet noted that many localities have wellhead protection ordinances that require would-be developers to identify any storage, use, or disposal of substances with the potential to contaminate drinking water sources. It may be possible to update the 1994 information with data assembled by individual localities.

d) Ron Brink: His division at the County Department of Health maintains an “inventory of everything that may contribute to contamination.” It is maintained on a GIS database (ARCVIEW and MapInfo). The data can be accessed by municipality, by location, and by zip code. It is not currently directly accessible by local governments throughout the County, but can be accessed by the County Planning Department. Susan Cummins noted that the database maintained by the Health Department is not only comparable to those available from commercial database companies like Vista and EDR, but is greatly superior to such commercial databases.

Centralized data repository: EMC (with the Planning Department) will serve as the central repository of data and information, including that described above, assembled by the Subcommittee.

7. Additional data sources: (a) Broome County Planning maintains 1937-1945 aerial photos, as well as a complete set of recent (year?) photos; (b) Broome Historical Society data; (c) IRIS at Cornell University is a database of aerial photos; (d) an extensive collection of historical Sanborn (fire insurance) maps is maintained at the Olin Library at Cornell (Susan will find out about acquiring Sanborn microfilm reels for Broome County); (e) Bob mentioned an 1876 Broome County Atlas; (f) Tom noted that DEC maintains a short list of Hazardous Substance (as opposed to Hazardous Waste) sites; this list could become longer if pending legislation is adopted; and (f) the Business Council Website may include an inventory of former manufactured gas plant (coal tar) sites.

8. NYSEG manufactured gas plant sites: These are sites that NYSEG acquired from other entities. NYSEG is not actively marketing these sites, but has been engaged in cleaning a number of them up, such as the former Manufactured Gas Plant Site at Court Street & Brandywine Avenue in Binghamton and the NYSEG Noyse Island site at Eldridge & Water Street in Binghamton. Chris Wood indicated that the Subcommittee’s efforts might be of benefit in promoting the resale and redevelopment of some of these sites. There may be other sites, however, that the company wishes to retain under NYSEG ownership. There ensued a brief discussion of the kind of contamination that is commonly present at coal tar sites. Tom Suozzo pointed out that one of the intractable problems associated with such sites are so-called DNAPLs (Dense Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids), which cannot be readily extracted from groundwater because they are not water-soluble. Asked whether DEC, in mandating remediation, takes account of such technical difficulties, the answer was “Yes.” Tom added that, in such instances, as elsewhere, DEC’s primary concern is addressing contamination that has the potential to migrate offsite.

9. Discussion of Partial Site Tabulation: There was a brief discussion of the first six sites listed in the meeting handout, “Sample, Partial Site Evaluations (11/27/00).” There are “extensive DEC files” concerning the Endicott Forging & Manufacturing Company site. It was noted that free product was found beneath the site, but it was deemed not to be subject to the State Navigation Law (because it was present prior to the effective date of that law). The Union Forging site is currently in remediation under DEC supervision. The 312 Maple Street site is a former Endicott-Johnson site that was taken over by the County for back taxes. It was inherited from Columbia Gas. A full investigation of the site has been completed. Some solvent contamination has been found. The County will apply for Bond Act funding from the State in order to move forward with the cleanup process. The prospects appear to be excellent for receiving such funding.

10. Subcommittee Intern: Burrell Montz has identified a candidate to serve as an intern to the Subcommittee. He is a BU graduate student pursuing a Master’s Degree in Geography. He has a B.A. in Geology from Lehigh University and has extensive experience as a laboratory technician in analyzing environmental samples. Bob Murphy and Stacy Merola will arrange to interview this candidate on behalf of the Subcommittee. If they conclude he is the right person to carry out the work required by the Subcommittee (see “Potential Intern Projects [12/12/00]”), they will invite him to attend the next Subcommittee meeting, and action will be taken to transfer the funds committed by NYSEG to the BU research account established by Burrell. The Subcommittee seemed more inclined to hire such an intern on a 10 hour-per-week basis during the Spring Semester—leaving funding for a second intern in the Fall—than to use all of the funding to retain a single intern for 16-20 hours a week during the Spring. This may depend, however, on what Bob and Stacy learn about the candidate’s time commitments and our ability to obtain as much as 20 hours of actual work from him each week.

11. Future Meetings: We proposed scheduling the next two meetings for January 9^th and January 23^rd (both Tuesdays) at 4:30 p.m. [STACY—I HAVE A CONFLICT ON JANUARY 9^TH. COULD WE MAKE IT JANUARY 10^TH OR 11^TH, INSTEAD? SORRY.]

12. The meeting adjourned at 5:59 p.m.

Recorder, Ken Kamlet

12/14/00