How Shadowy Corporations and Secret Deals Keep Retired Coal Plants From Being Redeveloped
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By Daniel Propp
May 9, 2024
“Perfect waste.” That’s how Bryan Messmore describes the 733-acre parcel of land at the confluence of Tanners Creek and the Ohio River.
Messmore is the city coordinator and redevelopment director for Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a town of 5,000 people in the southeast corner of the state that in 2020 appeared on the verge of a renaissance. Indiana’s port authority had designated the property by Tanners Creek as the future site of the state’s fourth port, a potential game-changer for Lawrenceburg’s economy.
Four years later, there is no port. There are no ships or construction vehicles. Instead, there is a mostly empty dirt patch, dotted with murky pools and earthen berms.
An environmental survey commissioned by Ports of Indiana found that toxic substances—including arsenic, boron, and lead—had leeched as much as 40 feet below the surface, contaminating the soil and the groundwater. A terse statement from the port authorityconcluded, “Remediation work would take years to complete on a significant portion of the land, rendering the site economically unviable as a port facility at this time.”
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