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5-0 No

Toxic Solite land to remain undeveloped

By Kile Brewer
Posted 6/27/18

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of County Commissioners filled almost every seat in the room, all for one agenda item.

About 32 Clay County residents used their …

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5-0 No

Toxic Solite land to remain undeveloped


Posted

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of County Commissioners filled almost every seat in the room, all for one agenda item.

About 32 Clay County residents used their three-minute time limit to voice opposition to a proposed land use amendment to grant an inactive shell corporation, Stoneridge Farms, the ability to sell off part of a parcel of land near County Road 209 to a developer. The site that would be developed was cleared by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection after the site’s former owner, Northeast Solite, shut down operations in the mid-1990s.

The problem, however, is that Solite eventually became a site that did nothing but burn toxic waste in enormous kilns. Day and night, the factory would burn its kilns so hot that the mortar between the bricks would melt out after a few months of use, according to former employees.

The item had already been unanimously denied at the June 13 Planning Commission meeting where nearly 20 residents spoke against the proposal. However, the buyer’s consultant Susan Fraser – who once served as head of the Clay County Planning Department – sweetened the deal and returned to the BCC with hopes of getting that decision overturned. Unfortunately for her, the commissioners did their homework, and voted a unanimous 5-0 to deny the proposal.

Fraser asked the BCC for a continuance to move the debate to the Aug. 14 BCC agenda. She also mentioned some changes since the Planning Commission meeting, including decreasing the proposed housing density from three units per acre to 2.5. Meanwhile, the standard for the area is around one, and a promise to do additional testing of the site prior to building new homes there. This was not good enough for the audience, though they kept their “boos” to a minimum.

Buyer Michael Danhour spoke after Fraser and said he is also concerned about pollution and would agree to additional testing before he built any homes. However, said he would have to be held at his word as there would be nothing stopping him from just building on the site as-is should the zoning be changed and the property sold.

Once the board had heard testimony from the buyer and his representative, commission chair Gavin Rollins banged the gavel and opened public comment. Each speaker pleaded to the board to deny anything that would allow the sale of this property before it is cleaned up.

The audience painted a picture of a decades-long cover-up by Northeast Solite, a company that had caused potentially catastrophic health issues and abandoned the site once operations ceased in 1996.

Multiple speakers with backgrounds in field and lab testing listed chemicals present such as arsenic, lead, dioxin and cyanide. One resident cited that of the 13 original homes near the former Solite facility, 10 nearby residents had died of cancer since 1996. Former employees told stories of black smoke pouring from the stacks during the night, when no one could see, as well as an outright disregard for their safety as they were frequently assured that respirators were not necessary as the chemicals were being burned and would not get into the air.

One man had lesions covering his arms that he claimed were turning into cancer, another lives with a defibrillator on his chest after suffering a massive heart attack at age 28 before being laid off by Solite. He had spent countless hours in the furnaces where the waste was being burned attempting to patch areas where mortar had burned from the walls.

Employees and neighbors of the property cited a multitude of birth defects and cancer deaths, all of which they attribute to their proximity to the site that burned toxic waste for decades. Michael Zelinka Sr.’s said his wife became pregnant with twins after his stint at Solite.

“My son, Michael, had a twin brother,” Zelinka had written. “He fit in the palm of my hand. He survived 2 minutes after birth. Michael was born legally blind, he has dyslexia. He was born a year and a half after I stopped working at Solite.”

After nearly two hours of public comments, Commissioners asked Stoneridge Farms for a rebuttal and Albert Galliano took the podium.

According to the Florida Division of Corporations, Stoneridge Farms has been an inactive corporation since 2016. The Department of State’s sunbiz.org website shows Stoneridge Farms is a subsidiary of Northeast Solite. Galliano, who introduced himself as a representative of Stoneridge Farms, is in Clay County actively trying to sell assets owned by the officially inactive company.

Galliano promised that the site would be cleaned up, and laid no blame on Solite. He said they were willing to put up $2 million from the sale of the residential piece of the property toward cleaning up the most polluted areas that are yet to be cleared by the DEP, $2 million that the DEP required to be stored in escrow for that very use when clearing the properties in question for future use.

“We did things the way they were supposed to be done,” Galliano said.

After Galliano sat down, Commissioner Mike Cella began the discussion and asked Galliano why Stoneridge Farms, or rather, Solite, hadn’t started cleaning the site upon the shutdown in 1996. Galliano ducked the question and gave a history of Solite, and explained that when the company divided up its assets they sold off parts that were undesirable, such as Stoneridge Farms. He then said that they currently don’t have enough money to do the cleanup which is why they’re trying to sell the property and make up the funds necessary to begin remediation.

Galliano went on to reluctantly admit that Stoneridge Farms is a subsidiary of Northeast Solite. Cella knew this and knew that the two companies share the same president and the same mailing address in Virginia. He then went on to cite Solite’s estimated $31 million in revenues in 2017, refuting Galliano’s claims that Stoneridge is broke.

“There’s a certain level of uncertainty because there’s a lot of uncertainty that you’re portraying,” Cella said. “… how are we supposed to believe that you’re going to be yearly reporting and then update the bank money to do the cleanup if we can’t even get you to pay the $300 that it takes to file as a corporation in the State of Florida?”

Following Cella, the rest of the commission shared his distrust for Galliano and Stoneridge Farms, with Diane Hutchings getting Galliano to admit his position as one of the five vice presidents for Northeast Solite, not Stoneridge Farms.

“These are our neighbors, these are people that we have family ties to, we love them. You’re from out of town, you worked here for a while, but you don’t live here anymore, do you? We’ve been left with a mess and it is going to be cleaned up,” Hutchings said. “We’re done, there is no more talk of development, there is only talk of cleanup.”

The commissioners continued with Gayward Hendry requesting that he be the one to make the motion to deny everything Northeast Solite had requested, and to deny any continuance or further action on the issue until the site had been completely cleaned up. Hendry suggested the site would make a nice county or state park.

“It’s gotta get cleaned up and you guys have to pay for it, you made the profits and you left and that’s just not the way [things are done],” Rollins said. “I believe government has a responsibility to rein in people who basically just come in and raid a community and then leave. That’s what I intend to do, I’m not sure exactly the strategy, but I intend to do whatever we have the ability to do within our power to hold you accountable and responsible.”

After the 5-0 vote to deny. the board directed county staff to put an item on the first agenda in July where they could discuss with the county manager and county attorney their best steps for ensuring Northeast Solite pays to clean up the property.