It has cost the government millions of dollars and years to tackle as part of an arduous process to rid a 7-acre parcel on the west side of Ogden of dangerous contaminants that not only threatened nearby households and businesses, but also the Weber River.
The Swift complex sat on the banks of the vital tributary to the Great Salt Lake and for more than 100 years was host to a meatpacking plant and later used to store surplus military items and was home to dangerous chemicals such as benzene, hydrochloric acid, mercury and more.
According to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, the legacy of environmental impacts featured thousands and thousands of abandoned containers, including flammables, corrosives, water reactives and other dangerous chemicals inside the buildings.
But the area is now close to being clean.
Long process of cleanup
The Environmental Protection Agency worked with the state agency to remediate the property. The removal action was successfully completed late last year with the removal of approximately 98,275 containers.
In the interim, the land was acquired in 2017 by Ogden City’s redevelopment agency. The contract appeared to let the previous owners, Bert and Kathy Smith, off the hook for any substantive liability. But a recent consent decree reached via federal court action leaves the previous owner with a cleanup bill of nearly $2.30 million and the U.S. military liable for the same amount.
The city shelled out nearly a half million dollars to acquire the property with an eye for redevelopment but is now also investing millions for the cleanup of an underground tank discovered in September 2018 at the Superfund site.
The building has since been razed, but DEQ regulators say more work remains to be done.
Chris Howell, an environmental scientist and program manager for DEQ’s Voluntary Cleanup Program, said the storage of hazardous chemicals when the building was used as a military surplus site posed contamination concerns for groundwater and the nearby river. As a result, extensive sampling was done.
“This was a preventative measure to make sure (hazardous chemicals) didn’t go into the river. We did do some sediment sampling and water samples in (the) river. But we didn’t find any clear evidence that the site contamination went into the river.”
Howell said the state is waiting to get a better characterization of groundwater contamination of the site and documentation from Ogden City.
“Often it becomes a funding issue. Often it becomes an economic issue where the priorities of the land use change,” Powell said. “So the great thing about voluntary cleanup programs is that we can work with them to try and achieve the goals of the individual project.”
Mike McBride, communications and marketing manager for Ogden City, said the land — once fully declared all clear — promises possibilities that are endless.
“The city is excited about the prospects of what this could become in the future and know that it will benefit the entire community. The 24th Street corridor is a main gateway to our city and we look forward to continuing to welcome visitors and residents through that area as it undergoes future changes,” he said.
“We will continue to improve access to recreation through this development, and highlight the beauty of the area and tremendous access to our rivers and trail systems.”
McBride said the city, in an ideal situation, would have liked the private owners to have prevented the contamination in the first place, but because there was not any viable market solution for Swift, Ogden stepped in to buy it.
Ogden City already has a kayak park nearby and Fort Buenaventura, located just across the street, features picnic amenities, a disc golf course, canoe rentals, an annual mountain man rendezvous and music festival.