New fire station land needs million-dollar cleanup first

Taxpayers could be forced to spend more than $1 million to clean up contaminated land purchased for a new fire station in a growing area west of Delray Beach.

The station is planned for five acres near the intersection of Linton Boulevard and Lyons Road. Palm Beach County agreed to buy the land for $1.04 million.

But some county commissioners said they had problems with the purchase because it would require spending up to $1.2 million in additional tax money to clean up soils contaminated with agricultural chemicals.

“The owner of that parcel is

going to walk away with that profit and leave us with that mess to clean up,” County Mayor Melissa McKinlay said when the land buy was discussed last month.

The county is purchasing the land from Haim Tepper and Mordechai and Sarah Markowicz, according to property records. Tepper is listed as the owner of the Four Seasons Foliage Nursery, which operates on the land and will close under the agreement.

The county agreed to purchase the land “as is” and discovered the contamination during an inspection before closing, Commissioner Mary Lou Berger said.

She said she doesn’t think the expense is unreasonable, given that much of the property in that area likely has similar levels of chemicals.

“There is a lot of land there that was farmland, and chances are if you put something there, it is contaminated,” Berger said. “The residents in that area have been waiting to get a fire station, and they would want their fire rescue people to be safe.”

The site doesn’t have to be cleaned up to more stringent residential standards, but county officials decided to take that approach given that firefighters would be there around the clock, she said.

The environmental assessment found the presence of toxaphene and dieldrin, decades-old insecticides that are now banned and have been shown to cause cancer in mice.

After meeting with county staff, McKinlay agreed to support the land purchase, and commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to proceed. McKinlay said county staff assured her the station’s water supply will not pose a cancer risk to firefighters.

Audrey Wolf, the county’s facilities director, said the county could possibly sell about half of the land to a developer, alleviating some of the cleanup costs.

Berger said she hopes the station is operating soon.

“The people have waited a long time for a fire station in that area,” she said. “It is a very long distance from surrounding fire stations.”