Sunday, June 21, 2009 | News, Atlanta
SP Brownfields and bright green creeks

After EPA announces cleanup funding, Mayor Franklin meets with neighborhood over polluting salvage yard she defended

This photo of Perkins Auto Recycling was taken through the fence of a neighboring property on May 20.
Stephanie Ramage

By Mark Woolsey
 
        Residents of the Capitol View and Sylvan Hills neighborhoods south of downtown Atlanta now see twin glimmers of hope in their campaign against junkyards they say are illegally dumping toxic chemicals. As detailed in The Sunday Paper’s May 31 edition (“The Hazard Next Door,” News), one of the yards, Perkins Auto Recycling, has been fined repeatedly by Environmental Protection Division officials for dumping oil and waste materials into the ground. Yet, when the city’s license review board voted against renewing Perkins’ license in 2007, Mayor Shirley Franklin stepped in to reverse the decision and get a license approved for the business.

Franklin is now scheduled to meet with the Capitol View Neighborhood Association to discuss the salvage yards issue as The Sunday Paper goes to press on June 18. As neighborhood association president Kim Garcia puts it, “We want to inform our neighborhood what is going on and let the politicians know we are not going to put up with this, and we need to come up with a solution. This is a systemic toxic contamination problem that affects the welfare and safety of our community.”
      
  A new loan program announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on June 2 may offer at least a partial solution. The EPA’s $1 million revolving fund grant is aimed at cleaning up polluted “brownfield” sites along Atlanta’s proposed Beltline and other redevelopment corridors. Such areas as Memorial Drive and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway have been discussed as possible candidates for the funding, say city officials, but no sites have been selected. The money would be used to decontaminate 10 to 15 sites. The Beltline and the other possible corridors contain some 180 brownfields.

          That’s where the Capitol View neighborhood may come in. Officials say it’s part of the Beltline overlay district. And, they say, there are three criteria for qualifying for the loan money. Charles Whatley, director of commerce and entrepreneurship for the Atlanta Development Authority, which is managing the project in conjunction with the city’s bureau of planning, thinks the Capital View-Sylvan Hills area could qualify under a provision involving adaptive re-use of old industrial complexes.

        Whatley says the fund is also designed for community projects supporting new development, and projects in the Beltline corridor creating new green space and commercial and residential development.

      “Most of the money needs to support private development,” says Whatley. “We want to go in where the gap is the remediation issue. The idea is to support available projects so we can get paid back and go out and fund more.”

         However, says EPA spokeswoman Davina Marricini, a certain percentage of the money is set aside for nonprofits and neighborhood groups, and they wouldn’t need to pay it back.

     That sparks the interest of the heads of the southside groups. Says Garcia, “If it is available to neighborhood groups, we could be interested in pursuing this.”

        Garnett Brown, assistant city planning director, says the neighborhood would have to get the junkyards to sign on to the cleanup idea.
   
“We could clean up an area and leave it for speculation for future development, but it would not be the preferred route,” he says, adding the city would rather work with developers who create new projects. However, he says, nonprofit community development corporations could function as developers. An agency founded in Reynoldstown two decades ago, for example, has helped create and subsidize new housing and businesses. He says some sort of revitalization or redevelopment piece would need to accompany the cleanup grant application.

“We’d love to have the area cleaned up, but the root of the problem is that there’s no one to police these junkyards,” counters Monica McAfee, president of the Sylvan Hills Neighborhood Association. “The laws are on the books, but not enforced.”

McAfee also wonders why eligible neighborhood groups such as hers seem not to have gotten the word about the grants. But the development authority’s Whatley says the project is still in its initial phase. Ample opportunity will be given, he says, for neighborhood and community groups to help create selection criteria and identify eligible properties. The money’s not expected to be officially earmarked until September, with the program organizing in October, he says. Officials anticipate the first projects being awarded to developers in 2010.
      
Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd, who represents the area, cautions that $1 million is a relatively small amount, particularly when matched up with an estimated 950 brownfields across the city. She would like to see the grant money go to good corporate citizens who have a track record of cleaning up, so they can continue on the right track.
   
Hours before the neighborhood’s scheduled meeting with Franklin, where the mayor was expected to explain why she and her law department sided with Perkins and against the residents, Sheperd, who was also scheduled to attend, told The Sunday Paper, “I will be very interested in what Mayor Franklin has to say.” SP