ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 4, 1997 TAG: 9703040034
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
All say the sites need cleaning up, but nobody wants to pay
Baker Avenue in Northwest Roanoke is a short, dirty lane through an industrial neighborhood, west of Shafers Crossing and south of the Lansdowne Park housing project. Its shoulders are overgrown and trash-strewn. And camouflaged in the brush alongside it is a waste site so troublesome that state environmental inspectors have asked for federal help.
Hundreds of barrels, some partially filled with unidentified chemicals, lie in stacks and piles on a 1.75-acre lot. There are more barrels than trees - the legacy of a defunct drum-recycling business whose owner died nearly three years ago.
The barrels have no owner and no value, and most have no labels. Nobody wants them, and nobody is willing to pay to have them removed.
Authorities see no immediate risk to people; they say there is no emergency. But those involved said the barrel field supports the need for a proposed abandoned waste-site clean-up program that will be pushed by one Virginia lawmaker next year.
They also say it points to the need for policies to encourage restoring tainted industrial sites to productive use.
Most of the the barrels are empty. The concern is for the few that may contain dangerous chemicals or their residue, said Rebecca Wright of the Roanoke office of the state Department of Environmental Quality.
"Until the site is cleaned up, I'm not comfortable with the site at all," said Wright, a senior environmental inspector. "There's a safety factor there, definitely."
Wright said inspectors found at least one barrel of oil and another containing caustic soda beads, a corrosive chemical. New barrels appeared shortly after the property owner died, suggesting someone used the lot as a dump site.
Legislation to help
Del. Creigh Deeds, R-Warm Springs, tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill in February to create a kitty of state funds for cleaning such sites as this one. He said there are at least 200 abandoned waste sites in the state and the estimated cost of their cleanup ranges from $200 million to $400 million.
Deeds also supports tax breaks and grants for those who will step forward to clean up sites for which they are not responsible. He also proposed a state foundation to spearhead cleanups. But lawmakers killed his bill in the session that just ended, said Deeds, who intends to propose a new version next year.
"This is an issue people in Virginia have been working on for at least eight or nine years," Deeds said. His main concern is the leaking Kim-Stan Landfill in Alleghany County, but other sites that need attention include various piles of tires around the state. A cache of millions of railroad ties in Radford also is without a responsible party to clean it up, said Norman Auldridge, an assistant waste division director at the DEQ's Roanoke office.
You could drive along Baker Avenue and miss all the barrels.
Don Cyphers, who died May 16, 1994, at age 47, didn't have a sign or fence at his barrel yard. Paul Thomson Jr., attorney for Cyphers' heirs, checked the site last summer and said he saw fewer than 100 barrels when he waded into the brush.
But look deeper and the picture grows more worrisome. Wright has counted at least 800 barrels. And a cleanup contractor estimated 1,500 barrels were present, many hidden under years of underbrush.
According to Wright, Cyphers received barrels from companies and rinsed them at a leased warehouse on Norfolk Avenue between Eighth and Ninth streets near downtown Roanoke. This location, the headquarters of Cyphers Drum Reconditioning and Recycling, contained 2,500 barrels when Cyphers died, Wright said.
No legal responsibility
It's not clear whether Cyphers broke the law by storing barrels near downtown and on Baker Avenue 21 blocks away. The city referred questions to the DEQ, which wasn't aware of the business while it was operating. The state became involved only after receiving an anonymous complaint about the Baker Avenue site 101/2 months ago.
Originally, state inspectors thought they might charge the companies that originally owned the barrels with cleanup costs. Businesses that could be identified by barrel markings cooperated by retrieving what had belonged to them. But that made only a dent in the problem, Wright said.
More recently, the barrels in the warehouse near downtown were sold to a scrap dealer by the property owner, who had rented space to Cyphers, and by the tenant who replaced Cyphers. The last barrels were removed in December.
The tenant, John Eberhardt, president of American Machine and Manufacturing of Roanoke, described Cyphers as "a saver" - 100,000 aluminum cans also were found, a cleanup crew told Eberhardt.
The Baker Avenue lot is still covered with barrels nearly three years after Cyphers died, and could remain so indefinitely, because of issues of law and money. Cyphers' heirs who inherited his land - Lynn Cyphers of Roanoke, his brother; and Cynthia Cyphers, his sister - can't be forced to clear the site at their expense, Wright of DEQ said. They haven't "accepted title to this property," she said.
Thomson, the family's lawyer, explained that people who innocently inherit land as Lynn and Cynthia Cyphers did when their brother died without a will and who didn't have a hand in fouling it aren't legally obligated to clean it.
The Cypherses also have told authorities they don't have the money. A precise cleanup cost estimate is not available, but testing alone to see whether hazardous chemicals are among any of the barrels' contents would run $1,500 per barrel, Thomson said. Even a fence would cost thousands of dollars, he said.
"About the best we have been able to do is try to keep people off the land" by blocking a dirt-road entrance, Thomson said.
The business didn't have any money when it shut down upon Cyphers' death. Until it is cleaned, the land has little or no value, Thomson said. In fact, the family has asked for a property-tax reduction because of the presence of the barrels, he said.
Although believing the site eventually should be cleared, the state can't legally spend its money on testing or cleanup because the DEQ is only a regulatory agency, Auldridge said.
The last hope appears to be the federal Environmental Protection Agency, whose inspectors recently agreed to look into the matter. The EPA has cleanup money that might apply for such purposes, although the EPA has not decided whether to use the funds, Auldridge said.
Calvin Giles, whose Giles Truck Sales occupies the lot next door, said something must be done. "The whole thing down there needs cleaning up," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL STAFF. 1. About 2,500 barrels were left at aby CNBleased warehouse on Norfolk Avenue near downtown Roanoke when the
owner of Cyphers Drum Reconditioning and Recycling died. Don
Cyphers' death in 1994 left the barrels in legal limbo. 2. The photo
at left was taken in December 1996. Recently, the barrels were sold
to a scrap dealer by the property owner, who had rented space to
Cyphers. The cleaned up site is shown below. Hundreds of barrels
more remain at a wooded lot in Northwest Roanoke on Baker Avenue.
color.