Adam Weitsman drops plan to buy Roth Steel site after finding toxic 'disaster'

ALBANY (Scrap Monster): Scrap dealer Adam Weitsman has dropped plans to buy and redevelop the former Roth Steel property, saying the site's environmental problems were too much for him.

Weitsman said a review of state Department of Environmental Conservation records show the 24-acre property is full of contaminants, including buried metals, petroleum and polychlorinated biphenyls, a toxic chemical compound also known as PCB.

While the presence of contaminants on the Hiawatha Boulevard West property has been public knowledge for many years, Weitsman said, he did not know the extent of the pollution until an engineering firm he hired reviewed DEC records.

Plumley Engineering, of Baldwinsville, reported that the cost to clean up the contamination would be at least $8 million and that the total financial liability could be many times that number if the pollution has traveled through groundwater to adjoining properties and into nearby Onondaga Lake.

Weitsman's Owego-based Upstate Shredding is the largest privately owned metal processor and recycler on the East Coast. But he said a liability of potentially tens of millions of dollars would be too much for even him.

"We were stunned to find what we found there," he said Friday. "When we got into it, it was a disaster."

Weitsman submitted the winning bid of $625,000 for the former scrapyard at a bankruptcy auction in November and paid a 10 percent deposit.

Weitsman and the court-appointed trustee for the property recently reached an agreement under which the sale was terminated and Weitsman's deposit was returned to him.

After submitting the winning bid for the site, Weitsman announced that he would clean the property and redevelop it with retail stores and a hotel. He said Friday he is disappointed he will not be able to follow through on those plans.

"It's really sad because it's an important piece of land," he said.

Attorney William Leberman, the trustee overseeing the property for the bankruptcy court, declined to comment on whether a new auction will be held.

Roth closed in February 2014 after operating at 800 Hiawatha Blvd. W. for 102 years. The family-owned business filed bankruptcy three months later.

Dale Vollmer, environmental engineering manager for Plumley, said some of the scrapyard contains PCBs in a concentration of nearly 1,200 parts per million. Environmental regulations require that any concentration of 25 parts per million or greater be removed, he said.

What's worse, disposal of PCBs in the concentrations found at the Roth site would require that the material be incinerated rather than placed in a landfill, he said. Incineration costs 10 times more than land-filling, he said.

Courtesy: www.syracuse.com