MILLIONS FROM HEAVEN

By Hal Phillips

This is the second installment of a series on the renovation of a Superfund site, a former uranium and vanadium processing plant in Monticello, Utah. Periodic reports by Hal Phillips, a former editor with Golf Course News, will examine what role golf may play in how a community of 2,200 residents utilizes land it will inherit from the federal government.

Monticello is offered a new, and lucrative, ball game by the government.

Like purposeful ants working over the far-flung remnants of a long-abandoned picnic lunch, the bulldozers, front-loaders and oversized dump trucks continue to prowl the ever-shifting ocean of red clay west of Highway 191 in Monticello, Utah. To the untrained eye, progress at this federal Superfund site might appear painfully slow, if non-existent. The property remains essentially featureless, no different than it did last November; it surely looks nothing like the nine-hole golf course Monticello plans to christen on July 17, 2001.

But appearances tend to deceive here in the quagmire.

Remediation of this once-forlorn property, where the federal government operated a uranium and vanadium processing plant from 1941 to 1960, has actually progressed in remarkable fashion. It was an unusually dry winter. This meteorological anomaly enabled the Department of Energy (DOE) and its small army of clean-up experts to work through the normally snow-sodden months of December, January and February. By early summer, well before the federally mandated deadline, this property will be deemed "clean." More than 2 million cubic yards of contaminated soil will have been excavated, hauled away, buried and sealed in a hilltop repository located one mile from the former mill site. Meanwhile, "ahead of schedule" doesn't begin to describe Monticello's financial progress. At last check, this city of just 2,200 souls was scrambling to raise the daunting sum of $500,000 — the minimum required to build nine new holes to complement the existing municipal nine on the east side of Highway 191.

The DOE had agreed, as part of its clean-up, to strategically push dirt around so that course construction might prove less expensive. Even so, Monticellans faced the prospect of building the course themselves, with money they didn't have. Yet the city's money hunt stopped abruptly in December when the DOE offered Monticello a deal. An extraordinary deal.

Superfund legislation obliges the DOE to return the Monticello parcel to its pre-1941 condition, even though the city doesn't necessarily want the property as it had been; it wants nine new holes. The deal? Simply put, the DOE has offered the city an unprecedented $6.5 million buyout. Under terms of the still-pending agreement, the city will assume responsibility for completing the DOE's three remaining environmental obligations: long-term erosion control, five acres of wetlands restoration and the rechanneling of Montezuma Creek, which runs through the property. Yet Monticello will be allowed to fulfill this obligatory troika in the context of building its nine new holes.

"We're trying to allow Monticello the necessary flexibility to build its golf course," explained Ray Plieness, team leader for projects in the DOE's office in Grand Junction, Colo. "We offered the city this deal because there was the perception that the federal government was participating in development of a golf course here. We're not; this is a reclamation project. But that was the perception, and we have to be careful about perceptions. We're just trying to do the right thing here while meeting our federal goals; that's all there is to it."

There are 1,264 projects in some stage of clean-up under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, better known as Superfund. In just 165 of these, the government (or one of its agencies) is the party responsible for contaminating the property. At Monticello, the DOE owns the former mill site and must see to its timely remediation.

A course has never been built on a government-owned Superfund site. The Old Works Golf Club in Anaconda, Mont. ("Works of Restoration," January/February 1997), occupies a former Superfund site. It is one of 182 sites that have been "de-listed." However, the responsible party in Anaconda was a private mining company.

Monticello's situation becomes even more extraordinary if and when it accepts the $6.5 million buyout, as the DOE has never offered a municipality this sort of deal. "We have offered similar deals to individuals, in Monticello as a matter of fact. But these individuals already owned the land," Plieness said. After removing contaminated soil, the DOE offered these individuals buyouts to restore their properties as they saw fit, he explained.

The DOE is offering the city of Monticello essentially the same deal, albeit with a few more strings attached. "There is some risk for the city; this was never intended to be a sweet deal," Plieness continued. "We've offered the city funding based on our best estimates. And we expect the city to fulfill its obligations to reestablish wetlands, handle erosion control and rechannel the creek. They must accomplish these three objectives — and we'll continue to work with them to make sure they do."

Indeed, if Monticello accepts the agreement, the DOE will remain responsible for the site's remediation. Similarly, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will remain responsible for holding the DOE's feet to the fire. "We're still on the hook with EPA," Plieness said. "But we're confident that we've built in enough controls that the city can and will accomplish our goals."

As evidence of spring builds its green momentum outside Monticello's administration building, the smile has yet to leave the face of city manager Trent Schafer. The government buyout has rendered moot what promised to be a long, frustrating, perhaps quixotic quest for cash. "It's really a win-win situation," Schafer said. "We've talked it over with our engineers: If we can't restore the wetlands, rechannel the creek and address erosion issues with the golf course, and not have a bunch of money left over in trust, then something's wrong."

Plieness indicated that the DOE would have spent considerably more than $6.5 million between now and its mandated completion — though he's not prepared to say how much. "We're still in negotiation with the city, so I can't give you the numbers," he said. "But this buyout will save (federal) money, I can guarantee that. It has to, because I have a lot of people looking over my shoulder."

How can Monticello clean up the property and build a nine-hole course for the $6.5 million when the DOE had budgeted more than that amount for clean-up alone? First, federal agencies aren't particularly well known for their efficiency; mandated levels of oversight and rigid bid structures are two more factors that routinely inflate government costs. Also, Monticellans have proved expert in pooling their community resources. The city has already enlisted cooperation from the College of Eastern Utah, located some 20 miles south in Blanding.

"They have a fair amount of equipment — loaders, maintainers, scrapers — that we can use to build this course," Schafer said. "We've asked them to put this equipment on site as a training exercise for their students."

Another example is topsoil, according to Doug Pehrson, a member of the city's Golf Committee who is an engineer and surveyor with San Juan County. "The government figured it would have to go four or five miles out of town and purchase topsoil from individuals, then haul it in with trucks. We think we can get the necessary topsoil from the site itself. The DOE allocated $1.4 million for topsoil; we can do it for $400,000. ... Also, there are certain areas where excavation was a little deeper than the DOE had planned. Their plan was to fill them back up with topsoil. We'll use them for ponds."

"Remember," said Schafer, "the government was obligated to restore the site to pre-mill conditions. We're not. We can use the land creatively to build this course."

Procedural hurdles remain, of course. The city must officially accept the government offer by June 15, and the DOE must formally transfer to Monticello some 350 acres. Under the terms of the pending agreement, the city must also adhere to an EPA-mandated timeline: By December 1 it must finalize a restoration plan for wetlands, erosion and Montezuma Creek. It must award construction contracts by April 1, 2000, and full restoration — the course — must be completed by July 17, 2001. Further, these dictates don't provide the city any direction or assistance when it comes to the novel prospect of actually designing and building a new nine.

But these are nice problems the city wouldn't have, had $6.5 million worth of government manna not descended from the heavens. "There have been times over the past few years when we might have lost hope, but this is real," mused Schafer. "It's gonna go."