Indiana GM sites receive federal funds to clean up

Eight GM automaking sites have received federal funds for clean up and liquidation purposes thanks to a bankruptcy settlement.

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller announced Oct. 20 that the General Motors bankruptcy case settlement would provide about $25 million  in an environmental trust fund for eight Indiana old GM sites in response to filed claims that stated these sites were contaminated from production.

“The old GM provided manufacturing jobs in Indiana for generations, and we can only hope that the emergence of the new GM from bankruptcy will mark a return to stability for one of the nation’s great automakers,” Zoeller said in a press release.

Old GM, renamed Motors Liquidation Corporation, negotiated a $773 million settlement with 14 states, which had claims against GM when the corporation filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Afterward, a New York federal bankruptcy court approved the sale of selected production facilities. In result of GM’s bankruptcy case, the corporation created a new entity and renamed itself General Motors LLC, or new GM.  

The new GM purchased the GM automaking sites that were considered usable.

Old GM agreed to use bankruptcy funds to clean up and sell some of the 89 left-over sites across the country, which will provide jobs to the surrounding communities, said Attorney General spokesman Bryan Corbin.

“Clean up will be the first step to redeveloping 89 sites so other employers can move into the site and provide jobs in the community,” Corbin said.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management will hire a trust administrator for each of the eight sites in Indiana receiving $25 million, Barry Sneed, IDEM public information officer, said.

The fund is split into three portions — cleanup efforts, plant security and redevelopment and non-cash assets. The $25 million Indiana received will be split proportionally to the estimated need of each site.

The former Delco Plant in Kokomo and the manual transmission plant in Muncie will receive the largest amount of the money from Indiana’s portion of the fund, according to Environmental Response Trust Property Funding for Environmental Activities
documents.

The Kokomo site will receive a total of almost $7.3 million, and the Muncie plant will receive about $5.7 million.

So far, GM has hired contractors to complete the cleanup process on these old industrial sites. Some sites, such as the former plants in Anderson, have already been demolished and begun remediation, Sneed said.

The removal of pollutants from the areas will be done to raise the quality of the land to current environmental standards set by the federal government for new businesses to build warehouses or manufacturing facilities at these sites.

“Nothing else can happen until cleanup takes place,” Corbin said. “Some environmental standards we have now didn’t exist back then, and we still have some contamination at the sites.”

Some sites have yet to begin the cleanup phase while others are continuing GM efforts to test soil and redevelop the site, Sneed said.

One example is that it might be difficult for workers to find an underground water line or that one part of the line is not contaminated and another part gives a reading of contamination, Sneed said.

“Discovery is a lengthy process,” he said. “It is very scientific, but it can be like finding a needle in a haystack.”