Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown finds it “unbelievable” that a previous City Council purchased a five-plus-acre site in 1999 — and built a police station on it — even though a study revealed that the site was previously a trash dump.

But former Mayor Bob Lenox contends there’s nothing wrong with the site, and there’s certainly no contaminated material there as Brown has claimed.

Months before the 5.5-acre site was purchased in 1999 for $140,000, an environmental study of the tract showed there were no contaminants in soil samples taken from the site; the report was provided to The Citizen by Brown. But no one knows what kind of trash is buried underground, Brown said, including under the city’s police department headquarters, which was built in 2001 for $1.8 million.

“Mr. Brown has no evidence whatsoever that there is one single thing on that site that needs to be removed or constitutes a health hazard,” Lenox said in an interview recently. None of the material can be considered toxic, he added.

Brown said an environmental cleanup might be necessary because the underground water table has risen to within three or four feet of the surface.

“Whatever is in that trash, whatever has been buried there, it is in the water table,” Brown said. “It could cause a legitimate health problem.”

Lenox said the city was aware as early as 1994 that the tract had been used as a dumping ground, but Peachtree City Holdings, which sold the site to the city, cleared all debris piles from the site in 1998 before the first round of an environmental study was conducted.

Jim Basinger, who was the city manager at the time the purchase was made, noted that the site where the police station was built near the front part along Ga. Highway 74 north showed no problems. The soil borings showed the buried trash at the rear of the property, away from the building’s eventual location, Basinger said.

The front part of the site, where the police station was built, “tested out pretty well,” Basinger said.

“There’s nothing wrong with the site the police building is on,” Basinger said. “I can assure you we did our homework on that site. The engineers came back and told us that site was fine.”

Brown said sewage sludge was dumped on the tract years ago when Georgia Utilities operated the Line Creek sewage treatment plant, a fact that was noted on the city’s 1999 environmental report on the site, compiled by Gallet and Associates.

Brown said he had local biologist Dennis Chase review documents on the site, and Chase is recommending the city conduct a cleanup of the parcel.

The city was able to get a good deal on the site because Pathway Communities, then known as Peachtree City Development Corporation, wouldn’t get much for the parcel since it was next to a sewer plant, Basinger said. But city officials knew the sewer plant would be closed in the future, Basinger noted.

“It was a good business decision,” Basinger said, adding that the city engineer, police chief and other staff had to sign off on the project. “We wouldn’t have invested that money if there was anything wrong with that site.”

Brown also noted that the police headquarters is having an issue with mold and mildew because of high humidity levels indoors, and he said that could be tied in to the underground trash material.

“They’ve had to scrape the mold off the building,” Brown said.

The purchase of the property was “a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Brown said, adding that he wouldn’t have taken the property had it been donated due to the liability involved with a possible environmental cleanup.

Brown also said he wouldn’t have built any building on the site. But Lenox contended that the only hurdle due to the buried trash was making sure the building site for the police headquarters was compacted appropriately to avoid any future problems with the foundation.

The city bought the 5.5-acre police station tract from Peachtree City Holdings, an entity affiliated with Pathway Communities, whose predecessor company developed the lion’s share of the city. Lenox pointed out that in a separate transaction the city got another adjacent four-plus-acre tract donated by Pathway to increase the city’s greenspace and protect that tract, north of the police station, and its two small creeks from ever being developed.

The land purchase also gave Peachtree City Police Chief James Murray a site where he “wanted to be,” Lenox added.

“It was perfect. Exactly where we wanted it,” Lenox said.

Brown said he wouldn’t have even taken the property had it been given away, simply for the liability issue surrounding a possible environmental cleanup.

Brown said he has brought the land deal up because the presence of the dump site on the police station property has to do with the damage that has been discovered with the police building itself. Brown also wanted to point out that the possible cleanup problem was created due to the action of the previous City Council and not the responsibility of his administration.

The moisture problems in the police department building may require “a big-time fix,” Brown said, adding that other attempts to fix the problem have failed.

Brown is running for re-election as mayor, facing five challengers in the city’s November election.

Lenox chided Brown for conducting an interview with a local TV station about the issue, though the former mayor said he didn’t care whether Brown took shots at him or not.

“I was mad because of what he did to this community,” Lenox said. “It just wasn’t right.”

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