Buick City Clean Up

Money is on the way to clean up the Buick City site. David Shepardson of The Detroit News reports:

An $836 million plan to prepare 90 former General Motors Corp. sites for new economic life will boost nearly four dozen Michigan properties, including the polluted vestiges of Buick City, Pontiac Assembly and Willow Run.

The program, announced by the White House on Tuesday, includes $161 million for the restoration of 47 sites in 14 Michigan communities. Many are along the I-75 corridor -- the backbone of Michigan manufacturing -- in communities such as Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and Bay City.

The idea behind the massive cleanup effort in 14 states is to "revitalize and redevelop old, shuttered GM facilities, preparing them for new industries, new jobs, and new opportunity," President Barack Obama said.

The Detroit News learned that Buick City in Flint, shuttered in 1999, will be the first project funded through the program because the cleanup plan for that site has already been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. The official announcement is expected today.

That's good news for economically ravaged Flint.

"The city of Flint was built around the central General Motors sites, but they've been in the deep freeze through GM's financial challenges," Flint Mayor Dayne Walling said in an interview.

The Future of Buick City

After a rousing and, at times, bizarre discussion of environmental degradation and the future of Flint's abandoned factory sites, comes this article by Melissa Burden in The Flint Journal:

Officials have said that an unnamed investor wants to transform the about 220-acre Buick City site into a multimillion dollar rail-to-rail and rail-to-truck intermodal facility, creating up to 600 jobs, plus construction jobs.

"Our hard work may be lost if we don't resolve the brownfield issue," said Tim Herman, chief executive officer of the chamber, which along with other area leaders has spent hundreds of hours on the Buick City project over the past three years.

Herman said at issue is who will have the environmental responsibility going forward on the site. Often times when someone buys an industrial property, the environmental liability transfers to the new owner, Herman said.

"It's not fair to have someone who wants to use this property ... and have him taking on all that environmental responsibility," said Bill Winiarski, chairman of the Genesee County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority.

Strangely, there was no mention of how Star Trek episodes might play a role in the redevelopment projects. (You have to read the first post linked above for this hilarious comment to make any sense.)