City of Dayton Killing Jobs, Hurting Economic Development (Part 2)

By Steve Staub (President, Staub Manufacturing Solutions)

The basic problems: Absolute (and unfair) chemical inventory limits have been placed on all properties in the Well Field Protection Area and the Protected Area boundaries defy logic.

I personally know many business and property owners in the Well Field Protection Area that...

• would love the ability to use additional materials so they could expand and/or diversify their business.
• have lost renters due to the limitations of the Well Field Protection Program.
• have property zoned industrial and deemed worthless - it can't be used for industrial purposes.
• have property zoned industrial, with all utilities, that realtors won’t list for sale (have you ever heard of a realtor not listing industrial property!).
• own property in the Well Field Protection Area and have been forced to purchased land outside. the area to build and expand their businesses just so they would not have to “fight the Well Field”.

You may be wondering, "What are the "hazardous" chemicals that are limited at businesses in this protected area?" The answer is, just about everything. The list includes normal items like oil, gasoline, paint, solvents, coolants and the like, but it also contains standard household items such as cleaners, mineral spirits, printer ink, cosmetics and, yes, even White-Out!

An aspect of this ordinance that I find to be really disturbing is the boundaries identified as the Well Field Protection Area. These boundaries are also referred to as the “1 year time of travel” and “geological boundaries”. The Dayton Water Department, for years, has made the claim that this area was chosen as part of a scientific study and that the area designated is all within the “one year time of travel”. The theory is that if you dump one gallon of a chemical in the soil in this area it could make it to the Well Field within one year. Not "would", but "could".

The problem is with the boundaries themselves in that they are based on very limited science (I am being generous here). Several well-respected environmental professionals have reviewed the “1 year time of travel” boundaries being used by the City and have concluded that they are potentially a 5 year time of travel or maybe even more.

This conclusion is somewhat supported by the fact that the Dayton Water Department requested nearly $1 million in taxpayer funds to perform a study that included time of travel studies for 2010. If they did a correct and accurate study in 1987 why would they need to spend $1 million to do another time of travel study in 2010? Obviously they wouldn’t. I don’t think they completed the 2010 study for fear of the outcome not supporting what they have been preaching for the last 26 years!

Another funny thing about those protection-area boundaries… they run along streets, uphill and along property lines. What sort of scientific calculations were used to arrive at the borders surrounding the Well Field Protection Area? Good question!

Or how about this. There is a huge commercial gas station that is NOT in the well field area, yet a property just 50 feet away from the gas station is. This property is limited to just 200 pounds of chemical usage yet the property next door has a pound limit in excess of 41,000,000 (yes, that's million!). If 41 million pounds of chemicals is acceptable in that general area, how can limiting an adjacent property to only 200 pounds be protecting anything? 

Or in my case, there is a very large (hundreds of thousands of square feet) plastics manufacturing facility at a higher elevation right next door to my business that is NOT in the well field protection area, but our property, which is just 40 feet away, is. Does this sound to you like regulations, boundaries and limits that actually reduce the risk of Well Field contamination or, better yet, even employ common sense? I don't think so either.

Tomorrow I will discuss the Well Field Fund Board and on Thursday we'll take a look at what other cities are doing.