Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 3
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Present, | am at the hospital with my husband; a nurse or someone could be coming in at any time and |
am using ear phones.
President Wilshire
| am here, | am alone and | can hear everyone.
Susan Loving, City Clerk
You have 15 in attendance.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
City Clerk Loving
You're welcome.
President Wilshire
Tonight we are gathered for a presentation on the Mohawk Tannery Site. | am not sure if | should |
recognize the Mayor or Director Cummings; but whoever wants to go.
PRESENTATION
Mohawk Tannery Update
President Wilshire recognized Mayor Jim Donchess and Tim Cummings, Director of Economic
Development on the Mohawk Tannery Update.
Mayor Donchess
Yes, thanks Madam President. Director Cummings is going to give the detailed presentation, but it’s been
awhile since we visited this subject — that is the Mohawk Tannery and therefore | thought I'd give a brief
background of how we go to where we are. The Mohawk Tannery closed in about 1984 leaving behind
some so-called lagoons which are basically just holes dug in the earth filled with tannery waste that was
accumulated over many years and they left, of course, without cleaning it up. Now at various times over
the course of the intervening decades, the EPA suggested that this technically could qualify as a Superfund
Site, but always warned the City against joining the Superfund list and this has been done numerous times
over many years, because they said the pollutants in the lagoons are not the most serious, are not
migrating. Therefore, if we in the Superfund List we would really never get reached because the funds
would never go down far enough in the Superfund List. So they advised staying off the Superfund List.
Now, of course, the City has had Superfund sites in the past; the most significant of which was the Gilson
Road Site which was cleaned up by EPA Region 1 at a cost of many millions of dollars when | was Mayor
before. So the site has just remained dormant, there’s been a few things done, some buildings torn down,
a little bit of cover work has been done. But the lagoons remain. Several years ago, the EPA approached
the City and a private developer and said that for the first time they were interested in getting involved in
possibly working to clean up the site. They indicated that the reason they were interested is that they
thought, and this was critical, a public/private partnership could be arranged. And they thought, especially
