Benny Westcott
An Oregon Department of Environmental Quality assessment of the former Willamette Industries mill site in Sweet Home found that $500,000 is necessary to abate the asbestos in buildings on the site.
At a Sept. 28 City Hall “work session” discussion, Mary Camarata, of DEQ’s Regional Solutions Team for the western region/mid-valley area, suggested that the city not purchase the property from Linn County, because it would then assume liability for the abatement.
This comes after a Linn County commissioners’ meeting last month where the group considered signing the property over to the city. Two Sweet Home city councilors, Dave Trask and Diane Gerson, were present at that meeting.
Linn County foreclosed on the nearly 160-acre former mill site in December 2010, after then-owner Western States Land Reliance Trust failed to pay $500,000 in property taxes. The space was to be developed for a housing complex.
The county is not responsible for the asbestos abatement.
“When you do a foreclosure, the county is protected from environmental liability if they take precautions and don’t exacerbate the situation,” Camarata said.
Councilor David Trask said he thought Weyerhaeuser was responsible, because the company purchased Willamette Industries in 2002 – what Camarata described as a “hostile takeover.”
“In my opinion, from Day One, I thought that that was Weyerhaeuser’s responsibility to begin with,” Trask said. “I just don’t know how to get around that. It would be hard for me as a buyer to want to have $500,000 over my head to buy it.”
“We have tried to have conversations with Weyerhaeuser,” Camarata said, “DEQ would like them to clean that up, but they have been pretty adamant that they’re not going to touch that.
They’re just saying, ‘Sue us, DEQ.’ So it’s not a good position to be in, because we don’t intend as a state to sue them.”
“The perception I’ve had for all these years,” Mayor Greg Mahler said, “is that Weyerhaeuser is Goliath and everybody else is the little peon, and nobody wants to take Goliath on. I can understand that to a certain extent. Plus, the fact that Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest employers in the state.
“But I would think someday, something has to move,” he added. “We can’t sit on property forever.”
The county received Environmental Protection Agency funding in the form of a site-specific assessment grant “after a couple attempts,” which allowed DEQ to act as project manager in the site inspection, Camarata explained.
“We did a bunch of sampling,” she said. “We figured out what areas needed more work and what would be suitable for redevelopment.”
She said that DEQ later identified groundwater issues on the site that had potential to reach a surrounding neighborhood.
“At that point we brought Weyerhaeuser to the table, which was good,” she said.
Camarata said that the DEQ didn’t attempt to make Weyerhaeuser negotiate sooner because “we would have to go to court to force the issue,” which she said the county had tried in previous years.
“This state is a voluntary clean-up state,” she said. “That means that we allow people to take the time to deal with things, the only exception being that if there is an imminent threat, we have ways of stopping that. If not, we let owners or responsible parties deal with it. That’s why there hasn’t been a big push to clean it up right away.”
According to Camarata, one site area had contamination in its soil, which will have to be removed with the dirt. She said DEQ anticipates finishing the inspection work and issuing a “conditional no further actions” in the summer of 2022.
Who will pay for the asbestos abatement remains unknown.
“I do want to approach the county and ask them if they are interested in a cleanup grant to deal with it,” Camarata said. “But the county hasn’t been willing to address it, either. Between Weyerhaeuser and the county, we don’t have partners that are willing to step up and look at this.”
The county had previously requested bids for property development and rejected all four of them.
Sweet Home Real Estate Restoration owner Josh Victor began making efforts to purchase the property about four and a half years ago, and has made multiple offers in the past. Of the old mill site, he said, “Nobody’s done anything with it for so long, and I feel like it would be beneficial to the community to get something going on it.”
For instance, he wanted to build infrastructure on the property to help the Jamboree move to more permanent grounds on a site portion deeded to the city in 2017 for development as a park space. The portion Victor sought to purchase lies on the city-owned land’s south border.
“We’ve attempted over the past several years to work to get the property back on the tax rolls and used and become a part of our community,” City Manager Ray Towry said.
At the end of the work session, the council elected Towry to schedule a meeting between council members and county commissioners to clarify their thoughts on the topic.