THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210416
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER AND JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Just across Streamboat Creek from the troubled Campostella landfill lies a scratch of city-owned land covered with junk cars, oil-stained dirt and shriveled trees.
While Norfolk has owned these unsightly three acres for years, city officials conceded this week they were unaware that Tubbs Auto Parts has used, and polluted, the property for at least a decade.
``You could say we were a little surprised,'' said Bud Shelton, real estate manager for the city's development department, which oversees some 8,000 acres of public lands in South Hampton Roads.
City officials only became aware of the problem, they said, when another company in the highly industrial strip off Indian River Road suggested buying the small tract for an expansion project.
Now, Norfolk wants that company, Dynamic Manufacturing Inc., to foot an estimated $200,000 cleanup bill for environmental damage inflicted by Tubbs on land worth about $50,000.
``They've got usable property that the taxpayers paid for and they've let this guy contaminate it,'' said Dynamic owner David Craze, who is threatening to move his expansion outside of Norfolk if the city maintains its bargaining position.
City officials were reluctant to discuss the matter, saying they are negotiating a three-way land deal between themselves, Tubbs owner William F. Tubbs and Craze.
Likewise, Tubbs did not want to discuss the property or his company's use of it. ``I don't think I should be talking to you,'' he said, referring further questions to salvage yard manager Sid Winter.
Asked if the city had agreed to, or at least knew about, the yard's encroachment on the tract, Winter said: ``Not really.''
``But we're working on something with them right now,'' Winter added. ``I'd rather not get into it right now, though.''
Dynamic, which produces a patented towing device for tow trucks, needs land to build a new plant, preferably near its headquarters at 2119 Indian River Road.
A survey last month of the city site by EnviroSolutions, a Virginia Beach consultant hired by Craze, found numerous environmental ills, including ruined wetlands along Streamboat Creek and contaminated soils a foot deep from years of leaking oil, gasoline and transmission fluid.
``The place is a mess,'' said Keith Miller, president of EnviroSolutions. ``I couldn't figure out how the city missed it for so long; the problems are pretty blatant.''
Miller and others are not sure the city did miss it; rather, they wonder if Norfolk quietly allowed Tubbs to utilize the site for a dirty, but necessary, business.
Indeed, Miller said a city development official told him as much during his site investigation. But Shelton denies any prior knowledge.
``We don't know how or when Tubbs moved out there,'' Shelton said. ``We're looking into the entire thing right now.''
The state Department of Environmental Quality, which enforces most anti-pollution laws in Virginia, said it was not aware of a problem on the site because no one has ever complained about dumping or contaminated soils there.
Similarly, neither the city environmental services department nor the city attorney's office was aware of any alleged misdeeds on the property.
In his report, Miller noted that the site sits in an intensely industrial area with a remarkable history of leaking underground oil tanks, groundwater contamination and toxic water pollution.
Just across a thin branch of Streamboat Creek, for example, is the Campostella landfill. There, the city, Army Corps of Engineers and a contractor have labored for more than a year to clean up an accident in which fly ash washed off the landfill and polluted the creek and its wetlands.
``I think you reach a point in that area where it's almost impossible to tell who's responsible for the problems,'' Miller said. ``And that may be what you're looking at with this little site. It just fades from anyone's memory.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff map
Area Shown
KEYWORDS: TOXIC WASTE CONTAMINATED LAND CLEAN UP by CNB