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Can an eyesore with a toxic past become an attractive gateway to Meridian?

Meridian Star - 6/15/2019

Jun. 14--Just off I-20/59 in Meridian, the vacant Value Fair Mall, which closed shortly after the 1997 opening of the Bonita Lakes Mall, greets visitors with its discolored walls, boarded-up windows and overgrown weeds along 22nd Avenue.

"It is the front door of our city," Bob Luke, a local architect overseeing the City of Meridian's Master Plan, said. "It would be ideal as a public or retail space and hopefully someone will do something with it -- make it clean and fresh."

While the city works to secure engineering services for the revitalization of 22nd Avenue, its main entrance from the interstate, Mayor Percy Bland hinted at a possible project at the mall site at a May city council meeting but neither the city nor RockStep Capital, which owns the building, would publicly comment on those plans.

The question is whether a neglected property with a history of contamination can be transformed into an attractive asset at the city's gate.

"We have looked at the building and examined it and we do not believe it is in a condition where it's economically feasible to save the structure," Luke said. "It could support some of the other things we have going on downtown... in my mind, it's the most critical piece of real estate (where) something needs to be done."

For years, the public perceived the mall as a brownfield, or a contaminated site, which qualified it for a site assessment grant. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said the only contamination came from the old Firestone location, which, after seven years, may transition into the final stages of a cleanup process.

"Right now, (owners are) not restricted from doing anything to any other part of the property," Lynn Chambers, an MDEQ Groundwater Assessment and Remediation Division Chief, said last month. "There are over 500 of these locations doing this and most are operating facilities."

Chambers said that a brownfield assessment at the site found no other forms of contamination other than the in-progress cleanup at the mall.

"One of our concerns is the Sowashee Creek -- it's right there," Chambers said.

The Sowashee, considered an impaired body of water, sits less than 300 feet south from where the underground tanks at the Firestone site rested for decades. Groundwater flows toward the creek, increasing the chance that the compounds could reach the sensitive receptor. Regulators asked EarthCon Consultants, Inc., the company tasked with cleaning the site, to increase its standards in 2017 and by late 2018 had met those new levels, according to reports submitted to MDEQ.

MDEQ designates the Sowashee for Aquatic Life Support and not for public water supply, reporting biological impairment and litter as causes for its pollutants in a report on the Chunky-Okatibbee Watershed.

The system pumps out ground water, cleans it in the white building on site and discharges it into the city's sewage system. Every four months, EarthCon submits a report to MDEQ outlining their progress and makes recommendations.

"In the last two reports, all of the concentrations were below our levels," Chambers said.

Now, talk turns to turning off the system and monitoring the site to ensure the contamination doesn't return.

Firestone at the mall

The Village Fair mall site largely avoided public attention until the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors began wrestling with a solution for the deteriorating Lauderdale County Courthouse in late 2016.

The courthouse has toxic problems of asbestos, mold and lead-based paint but is still actively used for county business.

In December 2016, architect Belinda Stewart, of Belinda Stewart Architects, gave supervisors five options in a 66-page study, one of which included moving all county business to the mall site for a projected $43.65 million. Another plan suggested moving all county business to the mall and selling lots around the site for private development at a projected $46.75 million.

Supervisors seemed to favor the plan until a concerned citizen showed them MDEQ groundwater contamination reports. Despite a brownfield assessment that cleared the site, the county declined to pursue development.

The Meridian Star requested MDEQ's entire file on the mall, labeled 1919, and examined 3,305 pages of reports, analysis and emails detailing 47 years of environmental concerns with three underground steel tanks installed at the original J.C. Penney store.

In 1972, the J.C. Penney at the mall installed three steel tanks underground: two 10,000-gallon tanks for gasoline and one 550-gallon tank for used oil -- all on a property that Firestone Tire & Rubber Company (a.k.a. Bridgestone) sublet from J.C. Penney.

Within 11 years, the company determined it didn't need the 10,000-gallon tanks, filling them with "inert material," such as sand or concrete, and the 550-gallon tank remained in use.

Had the tanks been closed just a few years later, J.C. Penney would have removed the tanks because of new environmental standards for the gasoline.

In May of 1986, the MDEQ changed its procedures for underground storage tanks, but the already closed gasoline tanks remained on the property for a fee of $40 per tank per year. J. C. Penney (and Firestone) had seven such tanks across the state including Hattiesburg, Meridian, Biloxi, Gulfport and three in the greater Jackson area.

The May 1994 removal of the still-functional 550-gallon Firestone tank found contaminated soil, according to a report from Ryan Murphy, Inc., the company tasked with removing the tank.

"Evacuated material has a TPH (Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons) concentration of 410 ppm, indicating a release of stored petroleum product," the report from project manager Larry Koppelman said.

TPH describes chemical compounds that originate from crude oil, according to the Environment Protection Agency, and must be lower than 100 ppm for soil and 18 ppm for water, as set by the state.

Ryan Murphy, Inc. transported approximately 21.44 tons of contaminated soil from Meridian and recycled the 550-gallon tank during the summer of 1994. This satisfied MDEQ and no further action was necessary, according to a Sept. 19, 1994 letter.

"The TPH concentrations existing in the tank bed area were below the corrective action limit of 100 (ppm) for soil as set by the State of Mississippi. Therefore, no further action is necessary at this time for this site," said Lynn Svendseen, part of MDEQ's Office of Pollution Control, UST Section.

MDEQ returns 18 years later

The remaining two 10,000-gallon Firestone tanks remained undisturbed until March 2012, when construction workers for Mississippi Power dug a boring hole for a gray water pipeline to the Kemper Power Plant from Meridian's waste water plant. The next day, March 6, workers returned to find the hole filled with gas, according to a subsurface fuel leak report to MDEQ.

According to a report in The Meridian Star, workers found approximately 100 gallons of gasoline in the pit, located about 100 feet from the underground tanks.

MDEQ hired a contractor to excavate approximately 700 tons of gasoline-impacted soil along with 30-40 gallons of "light non-aqueous phase liquid" (the same material discovered inside of Mississippi Power's pit) using a vacuum truck.

"(Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC) has already undertaken certain activities in connection with known environmental conditions at the Site, including the development and submission of a site assessment work plan," Debra Hamlin, a Bridgestone project manager, said in a May 15, 2012 letter to MDEQ. "BSRO hereby notifies you of its intent to continue to take appropriate response actions at the Site in accordance with, and to the extend required by, applicable laws."

Bridgestone hired Terracon Consultants, Inc. and Pickering Firm, Inc. to complete site investigations to determine the extent of the leak using 16 permanent underground monitoring wells. The 10,000-gallon tanks were removed in August 2012.

"Based on the elevated BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes) concentrations and free product identified on-site, Terracon recommended a vacuum recovery program followed up by a groundwater sampling event to evaluate free product recoverability and remedial options of the site," a May 2013 Terracon report said.

In July 2015, EarthCon submitted a Work Plan for Remediation System Installation, Operation & Maintenance and Sampling (Work Plan) to MDEQ.

MDEQ approved the plan to reduce the number of dissolved hydrocarbons in the groundwater via a dual-phase vacuum extraction remediation system in August.

Since January 2016, testing hasn't shown BTEX levels above MDEQ's standards. When MDEQ raised the standards because of the proximity of the Sowashee Creek in 2017, new groundwater testing met those standards by late 2018.

In the November 2018 report, submitted in February of this year, and the most recent report to MDEQ, EarthCon recommended continued operation of the remediation system until it had two groundwater samplings below the new standards followed by two more quarters of sampling before completion.

"Once the system is deactivated, should any groundwater sample exceed (MDEQ standards), EarthCon and Bridgestone will reevaluate and proved additional recommendations, if necessary," the report said.

The mall today

Aside from the groundwater pumping at the Firestone site, just behind the North Frontage Road Wendy's restaurant, the Village Fair Mall sees little other activity.

Boarded-up windows and doorways mark where businesses such as J.C. Penney's, Sears, Orange Julius and Radio Shack used to stand. The letters for Hudson's can still be seen from Village Fair Drive.

An advertisement in front of an adjoining empty lot on 22nd Avenue advertises the 350,000 square-foot facility as well as a nearby 28,000 square-foot building and other adjacent lots for RockStep Capital.

The El Chico's Mexican Restaurant across from the mall on the opposite side of the Sowashee Creek has been closed for more than 20 years and just last month the Fred's store on 22nd Avenue shuttered its doors.

A May 2018 Master Plan for the City of Meridian classified the mall building, located partially in a flood zone, as a dilapidated structure and suggested demolishing it for baseball fields and a complex that would be a tourist attraction.

For now, the mall's only visitors are people spilling out from the Wendy's, looking for a quiet spot to smoke a cigarette or eat their Frosty in peace.

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(c)2019 The Meridian Star (Meridian, Miss.)

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