The city of Alachua commission voted Monday to move forward with allowing 64.4 acres of land to be developed, but the decision has some residents alarmed because it's near the once-contaminated site of an old General Electric plant.
The vote was to change the status of the land, located along Highway 441 southeast of downtown Alachua, from rural to industrial and commercial.
There aren't any specific plans to develop the land, owned by Thomas R. Sperring, Phyllis Sperring, and Tom R. and Associates LLC, but Ocala-based Causseaux, Hewett, and Walpole Inc. is expected to in the future.
Residents worry the GE battery plant, which opened in 1963, contaminated the site's soil and water and that a new devleopment will stir up hazardous chemicals in the soil and will have detrimental health effects.
City of Alachua Attorney General Marian Rush and Adam Hall from the City of Alachua Planning and Community Development Department have both said that the areas under consideration for the new development are not contaminated and were never a brownfield designation.
Brownfield designations are given to former industrial or commercial sites that have their future use affected by real or perceived environmental contamination. The land that the battery plant used to occupy was once designated a brownfield, but it is now clean, according to city officials.
According to Alachua County, the site is a brownfield rehabilitation district.
The site "went through what is called a proper hazardous waste closure,” said Chris Bird, environmental protection director for the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department. “This is something that is under the jurisdiction of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.”
Bird confirmed that the site previously occupied by the battery plant did have some chemical contamination. But, he added, the site and the chemicals were cleaned up, and there are systems in place to continue to rid the area of hazardous chemicals that could still be there.
Lynn Coullias, a resident of the neighboring town of Hague, isn't convinced. She wrote an email to the Alachua County commission regarding her concerns about the wells near her yard.
“I strongly feel that this site needs to have its soil re-mediated, in addition to the wells tested, to quell the concerns of the citizens living within 1 mile of this site,” Coullias wrote.
In 2013, Coullias had the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department test for chemicals in her yard. Although the EPD found a cadmium level of 32, it was not high enough to warrant a cleanup because only levels above 80 are of concern.
According to the EPA, “Exposure to cadmium can cause an excess risk of lung cancer, as well as causing bronchial and pulmonary irritation, and kidney disease.”
One study, conducted by University of Saskatchewan professor Barry Blakley in 1986, suggested a link between cadmium and leukemia.
“Cadmium will effect tumors of the hematopoietic system in rodents," Blakley wrote. "In mice infected with murine lymphocytic leukemia virus, oral cadmium increases the incidence of lymphocytic leukemia.”
Coullias said she feels a personal connection to these negative effects, as both her husband and neighbor passed away after battling leukemia. Coullias believes these deaths are too much of a coincidence to not have been a product of the old battery plant.
Another Hague resident, Mike Parades, told Coullias: “When my daughter's doctor found out that my daughter and your husband had both died of leukemia next to a battery plant, he said there was a one in 100,000 chance that two people so close in proximity would both die from leukemia,” Coullias told WUFT in an interview.
The Alachua County EPD has tested the land that will be developed in the future and has not found anything to be wrong with the soil, water, or sewage system. The former battery plant land was initially cleaned properly and is still being taken care of today, officials say.
The Alachua County Health Department has also tested the well water in surrounding neighborhoods to ensure the development of the site will not cause any harm. It was tested once in 2003 and again in 2013.
“Based on some concerns some citizens had there, we performed water sampling, and we sampled for a whole bunch of chemicals. And we essentially found all sample concentrations were below MCL (maximum contaminant level)," said Anthony Dennis, environmental health director for the Alachua County Health Department.
The land under consideration for development was annexed by the city of Alachua in 2012 and is split into three parcels.
Before any development can take place, Causseaux, Hewett, and Walpole Inc. will need to create a site plan and have it approved by the city commission.