GUILDERLAND — The owner of the old and vacant dry cleaners at 2312 Western Ave. has applied to be named a brownfield cleanup site. According to the application, the property lies about 1,000 feet from the Hunger Kill.

Remedial costs for removing toxins from the site of the former Master Cleaners will be approximately $400,000 to $700,000, depending on the methods used, the application says.

“Most former dry cleaners that apply do get in, just because of sloppy historic practices,” said Robert Cozzy of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which runs the Brownfield Cleanup Program.

Benefits for the owner

If the property is approved for inclusion in the program, said Cozzy, the current owners would get two types of tax credits, once a more thorough environmental investigation is done and a final cleanup plan is agreed upon and satisfactorily completed.

One is  a remediation tax credit, which is a sliding-scale percentage of the amount the owner spent to clean it; the sliding-scale is based on how thoroughly the cleaning is done. The other is a tangible property tax credit, awarded after the owner puts up a new building on the site; it represents a percentage of the cost of the new building.

“So it’s not a dollar-for-dollar type of credit,” Cozzy said. “But they do get some of their money back.”

History

Charles Bohl Incorporated bought the 0.43-acre Master Cleaners property in 2011, according to the brownfield application, which is available for public viewing at the Guilderland Public Library.

The purchase price was $200,000, according to a deed listed in the online records of the Albany County Clerk’s office.

Albany County assessment rolls posted online show that Charles Bohl Incorporated also owns the building next door, at 2314 Western Ave.

The brownfield application estimates that 2312 Western Ave., near the corner of Foundry Road, was used as a dry cleaners from approximately 1956 through 1996, and notes that, at the time of purchase, it had been vacant “for many years.”

The company did not return repeated calls asking for comment on its application.

Federal regulations since about 1980 have treated dry-cleaning spent solid wastes as hazardous waste, said Cozzy. But the owners of these small businesses have not always known about the regulations, he said, and they have often simply thrown the old machine filters, saturated with toxic chemicals, into Dumpsters or onto the ground behind the businesses, resulting in many years of leakage into the ground.

In October 2015, a Hudson Falls company called Property Solutions performed a preliminary environmental investigation, involving soil borings — later converted into monitoring wells — and field soil samples. The company found indications, according to its report contained in the application, of concentrations of volatile organic compounds in the soil and groundwater in at least three of four soil boring sites.

The report also says that “the detected VOC [volatile organic compounds] compounds appear to consist of formerly-used dry cleaning fluid impacts and/or breakdown constituents.”

Sites previously used by cleaning companies typically have soil and groundwater contamination in the form of perchloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), and associated breakdown products.

What’s bad about these two chemicals

There are an array of health effects linked with PCE and TCE exposure, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control, depending on when someone is exposed and for how long and the type of exposure. Children who were exposed prenatally can suffer leukemia, fetal death, major heart defects, and neural tube defects.

Health problems in people who drink contaminated water include non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia, rectal cancer, bladder cancer, breast cancer, and lung cancer. Those working with these chemicals have suffered various types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, neurological effects, and generalized hypersensitivity.

The Property Solutions report concludes that VOC impacts were identified in both soil and groundwater, especially along the property’s southern, southeastern, and southwestern sides. The Hunger Kill is approximately 1,000 feet to the southwest, the application notes.

Property Solutions recommends more thorough testing.  

Redevelopment

There are no specific plans for redevelopment of the site yet, says the application. The anticipated use, it says, will be commercial or restricted residential.

Charles Bohl Incorporated’s application says, “Completion of the project will benefit all parties (citizens, businesses, services) as it is an integral part of a much larger public/private effort to remove and redevelop blighted properties, and improve the living standard for the citizens.”

The Master Cleaners building is one of three in a row that are empty on a busy stretch of Route 20 near Foundry Road.

Like Nedco Pharmacy on Carman Road and the Governors Motor Inn on Western Avenue, Master Cleaners is one of the examples often cited by residents who complain about vacant, rundown commercial properties around town.

The town recently amended its abandoned properties law to more clearly define an “abandoned property” and to clarify the steps the town can take to ensure enforcement of its zoning regulations for properties deemed to have been abandoned.

Corrected on Sept. 9, 2016: We originally wrote that the stream near the former Master Cleaners, the Hunger Kill, flowed into the Watervliet Reservoir. It does not; it flows into the Normans Kill below the reservoir.