Perx site cleanup cost jumps

By Patricia Doxsey, Freeman staff Daily Freeman February 13, 2006

RED HOOK - The cost of cleaning up contamination on the former Perx property has nearly doubled, thanks to unanticipated expenses and the discovery of ground pollution on adjacent lands.
Dutchess County legislators are expected to vote Tuesday on a resolution allocating an additional $1.2 million for remediation work at the site off U.S. Route 9. Members of the Legislature's Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday endorsed the additional expenditure.
Of the total additional cost, $194,427 will come from the county's coffers. The remaining funds will come from the state.
Local and county officials have been working for the past several years to transform the 20-acre property, once the site of apple orchards and a frozen food processing plant, into senior citizen housing site. Putnam County Developer Ken Kearney, who is buying the property from the county, plans to construct a complex of 80 to 100 apartments.
Cleanup of the site was originally pegged at $1.76 million, with the state carrying 50 percent of the cost of building demolition and 90 percent of in-ground cleanup and soil removal costs.
Ken Moynihan, building administrator for the Dutchess County Department of Public Works, said cleanup crews discovered underground fuel storage tanks that they were not previously aware existed, along with some contaminated soil on at least three neighboring properties and on-site contaminated water.
Additionally, he said, a building with an asbestos roof that had been slated for demolition collapsed, forcing the county to treat the entire structure, rather than just the roof, as a hazardous cleanup site.
"At every step of the way, we're finding the unexpected," said Moynihan.
Because the county agreed to accept funding under the state's brownfields cleanup program, it has to finish the job it started, Moynihan said.
"The county was bound to remediate this property no matter where it took us," he said. "If we choose not to go (forward), not dollar one will be reimbursed to Dutchess County, not even what we've spent already."
Under the state program, the county pays for the cost of the cleanup and is reimbursed by the state.
Legislator Marc Molinaro, R-Red Hook, who heads the Legislature's Budget and Finance Committee, said the additional county money will come out of its capital reserve fund.

©Daily Freeman 2006

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