Re: [TCML] Tesla Museum discussion

[Joe Mastroianni <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I should not misspeak, as I am sure that indeed, there may be govt. help in the remediation.
But my family has been involved in owning hazardous waste sites in the NY/NJ area from back in the 80's and 90's.  Essentially, once you take control of a property so listed, it is your responsibility to clean it up before you do anything on it resembling human habitation.  You are also required to clean it up if it is presenting a hazard to others.   There may be govt. help in this, or not.  If not - it is still your responsibility and you can face stiff penalties if you don't comply.  Also, that toxic waste belongs to you forever, until you can get someone else to take responsibility for it.  And it pretty much "sticks" to you as your liability until you can unload it.

This was a source of funding for organized crime back in the 80's and 90's.  They would accept fees from landowners who needed to get waste labeled "hazardous" off their books as a liability.  And because of the legal liabilities, the landowners would be willing to pay a hefty sum to get that hazardous waste off their hands. The criminals would take the payment and truckloads of contaminated material, and then just dump the material in the pine barrens or the ocean.

It seems in this case, things are pretty well contained. Doesn't look like it's endangering the surrounding areas from that report.  But the rest of it would have to be cleaned up to the government's satisfaction before you could put some sort of museum or habitation on that land.  And once you owned it, you would own the chemical waste problem, too.

My dad once owned a manufacturing facility in Newark, NJ, near the airport.  They used it to separate recyclable materials (paper, glass, metal, etc.)  But the site had been used to store old tires, which are considered hazardous waste.  My father got the property for a song because nobody wanted to take responsibility for cleaning up those tires.  My father, as well,  couldn't afford to remove the tires and dispose of them "appropriately", so he just left them there.   They did not disturb his recycling business.

Later, when the company went bankrupt, my dad sold the property at a loss to another organization.  At least the hazardous tire problem didn't belong to him anymore.

The new owners decided the solution to the tire problem was to set the mountain of tires on fire.   So they did.

Those tires burned for so long, and with such heat, that they damaged an overpass of the NJ Turnpike.

So it goes.

Joe



On Aug 24, 2012, at 7:05 AM, Jim Lux wrote:

> On 8/23/12 10:16 PM, Joe Mastroianni wrote:
>> As I remember from reading about the property when it went up for
>> sale a couple years ago, there were many issues beyond just ownership
>> of the land.  I was considering the same thing suggested here - that
>> one would have to raise about $1M and with matching funds from the
>> state, one Tesla laboratory site + buildings could be owned.
>> Figuring that $1M is the price of a 3 bedroom house in some parts of
>> silicon valley, it seemed it might be easy to drum up that kind of
>> dough.
>> 
>> However - If I'm remembering correctly, Agfa had a plant on the
>> property for years, and it was designated a superfund site.  So not
>> only will the owner have to worry about refurbishing the buildings
>> and surroundings, but will also have to handle treatment of the
>> grounds which are apparently rife with chemical waste.  Fixing that
>> problem will undoubtedly cost many times the purchase price of the
>> land.
>> 
> 
> Superfund, as the name implies, is a fund to pay for remediation of such sites.  So the new owner shouldn't be on the hook.  Agfa (and all others who have paid into the fund) basically are.
> Cribbing from Wikipedia:The law authorized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify parties responsible for contamination of sites and compel the parties to clean up the sites. Where responsible parties cannot be found, the Agency is authorized to clean up sites itself, using a special trust fund.
> 
> It kind of depends on what the actual contamination problem is, also. For all we know the man himself dumped stuff..
> 
> 
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