Property owners push for ‘innocent buyer’ legislation
Bill would relieve responsibility for contamination buyer didn’t cause
MADISON - Wisconsin residents battling contamination on their properties they didn’t cause are asking legislators to pass a bill that would shift the responsibility elsewhere, relieving them of the burden of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup costs.
Property owners shared their experiences Wednesday with the Assembly Committee on the Environment in support of legislation that would potentially absolve responsibility for contamination not caused by the owner if the building was purchased before 1992.
But a representative of the state Department of Natural Resources said the bill could end up causing more issues in the long run.
The legislation is the result of years of pushing for help from the state from Ken Koeppler, a Madison musician who unknowingly purchased contaminated property in the 1980s. The “innocent buyer” legislation would help lift the price of remediation off Koeppler.
Koeppler found out there was contamination beneath the building he was renting out in 2015, after the DNR asked to conduct testing on his property. Since then, he’s been battling the state over the responsibility for the cost of the cleanup.
When he purchased the property, he didn’t know that the building had ever been used as a dry cleaner, let alone that the business had released tetrachloroethylene, also known as PCE, into the environment.
So far, Koeppler has placed a vapor mitigation system beneath the building to handle the toxic fumes rising through the concrete below it, dug monitoring wells and paid for testing, but there is still more work to be done to find the extent of the contamination and remove it from the densely packed neighborhood on Madison’s east side.
But Koeppler is afraid to move forward with additional testing because the work he has done has cost him thousands of dollars. He doesn’t want to be forced to spend his life’s savings on cleaning up contamination he didn’t cause.
‘I want to sell it and cash in’
Mark Honadel, a former state representative and a business owner, is facing similar issues with a building he’s been trying to sell.
He bought the South Milwaukee building in 1989, he said during the hearing, and it’s now used as a business incubator, with several businesses renting space inside. Honadel and his wife decided to sell the property recently, and after finding a buyer and going through an environmental evaluation process, found there had previously been a gas tank buried on the property.
The potential buyer and Honadel split the cost to search for the tank, which was never found on the property. But the analysis did turn up other contamination beneath the driveway in the industrial fill, which was used to level the ground out and capped with clay and gravel. Even though he had nothing to do with the industrial fill being placed there, he was named as responsible for the testing and cleanup.
“You know, the fill has been there for 70 years. We’re not going to disrupt it,” he said. “We’re gonna leave it right there. We’re not gonna do anything to it. Nobody’s going to breathe into the dust or anything.”
Now, Honadel is worried that he will never be able to sell the building, which he and his wife had been counting on as part of their retirement plan.
“I took such good care of that property. I fixed the building, I put a new roof on, I kept this pristine for 30-plus years,” he said. “I want to sell it and cash in.”
Legislation could be a ‘threat to human health’
But the DNR argues the bill could end up leaving contaminated properties without treatment, simply because there wouldn’t be enough state funding to handle testing and remediation.
Christine Haag, director of remediation and redevelopment for the DNR, said the legislation could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money and leave a slew of properties sitting abandoned due to contamination.
Haag said that the legislation could potentially impact the spills law, which has been used for decades to ensure that Wisconsin’s water, soil and air remain clean.
“The spills law is designed to protect the public from exposures to hazardous substances and our public natural resources like drinking water from contamination from spills and other chemical discharges,” Haag said. “The spills law has been a fundamental building block of our successful nationally recognized program. We’ve issued over 28,000 cleanup approval letters.”
Unless a fund is created and routinely funded there won’t be money to pay for testing and remediation, she said.
“Without additional funds, these properties will likely stay contaminated,” Haag said. “It will intensify the public health threats in inequities to low and moderate-income people, including vulnerable children, pregnant women and people of color living in Wisconsin’s disadvantaged and rural communities.”