Friday's Internet Edition, July 03, 2009.
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Commissioners said that they had received calls from concerned citizens about the decision, which originally had been placed on the board’s consent agenda. Larry Potts said that he was asked what would happen if the county was sued by someone who spent time at the jail and later developed cancer. County Manager Robert Hyatt said that the board could add a level of insurance for pollution, even though preliminary testing did not find significant issues.
Commissioner Sam Watford said the contamination that many people are worried about is located next to the proposed jail site, not within it. The building on the property was not bought by Duracell until the 1970s, and it was used for storage, shipping and assembly.
“We’re not on the Duracell site,” Commissioner Sam Watford said. “We’re on what I call the Ames site, where the Ames departent store building was.”
Though Tuesday’s vote means the county will need to spend money to continue testing the site, Chairman Fred McClure assured the public that the county has not yet committed to building a jail there.
“This vote tonight is not to purchase any property,” McClure said. “It is just to make sure that the Ames property and the acreage there is without any kind of contamination that would be a problem.”
Commissioner Billy Joe Kepley said that the Ames site is appealing to commissioners because it’s a one-owner property, it has existing parking, there is room for future expansion and its price would be low. There were other aspects that made him decide not to support it, though.
Inmates would have to be transported 1.7 miles to the courthouse downtown, which is a security risk, Kepley said. He also said that the old Lexington landfill, located about a mile away, is unlined and could be producing dangerous amounts of methane gas. Decades ago, a similar landfill in Winston-Salem exploded when an employee at a nearby armory lit a cigarette and ignited the gas. Mercury contamination also may be an issue.
“I’ve got a stream of calls about this, and the bulk of those calls has been from employees of Duracell,” Kepley said. “It really scared me what the management told them to do with [excess mercury], and what scared me even worse is what they said they did do with it, in some cases.”
He said that mercury from the Duracell plant has been dumped above and below ground on the property, including spots on the potential jail site. According to McClure, though, preliminary environmental study has found no groundwater contamination when testing several different wells, and new wells soon will be added and monitored.
Kepley urged the board reconsider the downtown site, which he said would not have as many environmental issues and could be done with less demolition than projected. Potts said he could not support the downtown site because it would not leave room for future expansion and growth, and other commissioners agreed, including Max Walser.
“The Duracell [Ames] site may not be what we want either, and we’re going to find out if we do this study,” Walser said. “I’m not going to vote to put a jail on a site that’s got mercury contamination on it. I will not do that.”
Staff Writer Karissa Minn can be reached at 888-3576 or newsdesk@tvilletimes.com.