Sunday, August 09, 2009
General Motors got not only a new lease on life from its government-engineered reorganization, but also permission to walk away from cleaning up its old polluted factory sites. From Michigan to New York local officials are seriously concerned that environmental messes produced by GM’s old auto manufacturing sites will not be addressed, leaving cleanup of an estimated $530 million in polluted structures, soil and water unaddressed.
In Flint, Michigan, city officials are trying to redevelop GM’s old Buick City manufacturing complex (closed in 1999), but that effort may get delayed if the auto company is allowed to ignore the mess left behind. In upstate New York there are a dozen old GM sites that need remediation, including a 270-acre site near the St. Lawrence River where auto officials used to dump toxic sludge. Other GM-produced environmental concerns exist in Ohio, Delaware, Indiana and Colorado.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
GM Gets to Dump Its Polluted Sites (by Tim Higgins, Detroit Free Press)
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