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Palm Lakes Residents Looking for City Bailout
• Stuck with an abandon golf course full of arsenic, Palm Lakes residents turn to taxpayers for help.
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Thursday,
August 27, 2009
A victim to America’s declining interest in the sport of golf, the 18-acre parcel along Margate’s West Atlantic Boulevard formerly known as the Palm Lakes Golf Course has remained barren for years. The owner, Palm Lakes Holding LLC, wants to re-zone two acres of the property for a shopping mall and hand the remaining sixteen arsenic-ridden acres over to the city for a passive park.
Dozens of Palm Lakes’ residents clamored at City Hall Wednesday night, all wearing red shirts in support of a deal that includes Margate taxpayers footing the bill for park maintenance. A relatively expensive undertaking considering the city’s already troubled budget.
If the city agrees to rezone two acres adjacent to West Atlantic Boulevard for commercial use, Palm Lakes LLC will agree to clean up and landscape the remaining 16 acres. Taxpayers will own the park and be burdened with the cost of maintaining a property that brings no value to the city’s tax roll. Presently, Margate maintains 18 city parks, some of which have taken a back seat as a result of budgetary constraints.
City Manager, Frank Porcella, told Commissioners Wednesday that there is little to no room in the Parks & Recreation budget to support maintaining a Palm Lakes park.
In addition, Palm Lakes’ residents are requesting restrictions to the park that include no signage of any sort in the park, and no signage placed on the city’s right of ways (or otherwise) indicating the park’s location. The park’s sole pedestrian entrance would be located on NW 76th Avenue and would be closed to the public after dark.
As part of the deal, taxpayers will not be allowed to construct basketball or tennis courts on the property. No baseball facilities, no clubhouse, no exercise path and no concession facility or restrooms. Essentially, taxpayers will be asked to shoulder the cost of a large yard that will be used primarily by Palm Lakes’ residents.
Like other abandoned golf courses across the state, the former Palm Lakes Golf Course contains high levels of arsenic, an ingredient common to pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers used to maintain golf courses. City officials expressed concern over the poison and pointed to the potential for liability should a resident accidentally ingest the substance, which could lead to illness and / or death and result in costly litigation to taxpayers.
According to experts at Environmental Health Perspectives, the cost for effectively remediating soil poisoned with arsenic can run up to $1 million an acre.
Excavation is the quickest and most thorough remediation method, which involves scraping up the contaminated topsoil, hauling it away to an approved landfill and replacing it with clean dirt.
Realistically, removal is the only way to eliminate risk, says Washington State University soil scientist Frank Peryea, “but it’s very expensive,” he said. Total remediation can sometimes cost millions, and is a huge undertaking.
Peryea does the math for 1 acre: “If you have contamination down to three feet, you're looking at getting rid of three acre-feet of soil—that's twelve million pounds of soil.”
Capping, which involves simply putting a 12- to 18-inch layer of clean soil over the contaminated soil, has been used in some locations. However, this requires enormous amounts of clean dirt. Furthermore, capping cannot be considered a permanent solution—plants will grow on the soil caps, their roots will penetrate the contaminated soil, and the vegetation will eventually redistribute the arsenic to the clean soil. Also, it is common for the soil caps to be disturbed by construction activities.
Soil blending is another alternative, and one that is growing in popularity, say experts, particularly when contaminant concentrations are only minimally in excess of actionable levels. This involves bringing clean soil to a site and mixing it with the existing topsoil with the intent of reducing concentrations below levels that require health-protective actions.
Although relatively effective, blending can be a hit-or-miss operation. The main reason is that operators can't always achieve 100% blending, and it very much matters where the subsequent samples are taken—even a few inches can make a difference. Sometimes it is necessary to repeat the procedure, which, of course, drives up costs. Also, disturbing the soil in this way has the potential to mobilize the arsenic, which is dangerous.
Palm Lakes’ residents are not alone in their condo debacle. Oftentimes when a condominium’s original developers pass common area land off to third party developers or condo associations, properties quickly become mismanaged and fall into disrepair, usually due to a condo board’s ineptness to appropriately manage their property, along with resident’s lack of involvement in overseeing their community -- thinking that everything is okay because their board members tell them so.
Margate city officials will be meeting with the Palm Lakes Condominium Board and Palm Lakes LLC to attempt to arrive at a solution to the problem.
Should Margate taxpayers shoulder the burden of Palm Lake’s inability to adequately manage their association's business? Can Margate taxpayers afford another park? Will Margate taxpayers visit a park with a history of arsenic? Can the developer afford to effectively remediate the arsenic? Chime into the poll at the sidebar on the left.
MargateNews.net welcomes your comments on this matter, which you can either post in the poll section or email to MargateNews@bellsouth.net and have posted in the opinion section.
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Copyright © Cassius Group Inc. 2009
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