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The Cincinnati Beacon
Error by MEP? County says environmental site assessment was conducted
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Recently, Michael Earl Patton wrote this item about the site for the new jail, and the danger involved in accepting land without an environmental site assessment. Today, The Beacon received the following letter, which purports that such an assumption is incorrect.
Dear Sirs:
Please accept the following information in response to a recently posted article on your site:
Recently an article appeared on the Beacon’s website which reported that an Environmental Site Assessment was not performed on the Sara Lee/Kahn’s site prior to Hamilton County taking ownership (Is the New Jail Site a Ticking Time Bomb, Sept. 10, 2007, Michael Earl Patton). I am uncertain as to where the information for this article was obtained, but I can assure you it is in error. In fact, a full Phase I Environmental Site Assessment was performed of the Sara Lee property prior to the County accepting ownership.
The Phase I assessment, submitted to the company on January 26, 2007, was conducted to professional industry standards, by a qualified third party environmental consulting firm, and was followed (again before transfer of ownership) by an additional baseline Phase II assessment which involved the analysis of multiple groundwater and soil samples. In short, the County completed the appropriate environmental due diligence activities, and obtained the technical assistance of qualified, professional environmental consultants to interpret that data prior to accepting donation of the site. I appreciate the opportunity to ensure that the public, and visitors to your site, are properly informed on this issue.
If there is another means by which this message should be posted to your site, to ensure its dissemination, please let me know. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey W. Aluotto
Assistant County Administrator - Public Services
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