New Alliance Announced To Resolve 20+ Year ‘Plume’ Issue
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A downtown Montgomery contamination issue’s been lingering for more than 20 years. And Thursday the city’s taking a step to hopefully clean it up.
We are talking about the Capitol City Plume, that’s a 30-50 block area in downtown where there’s pollution underground. Investigators say printing, photography and other chemicals are what caused the pollution.
The federal government took notice back in the early 90’s and since then the wells were closed and there’s been a drilling ban.
But Thursday, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange announced a new Downtown Alliance that will hopefully cleanup the contamination and move forward from this issue.
The alliance is made up of city, county, state and a private entity. The alliance would pay more than $2.5 million back to the federal government, and also fund the cleanup effort.
Heather McTeer Toney, Regional Administrator EPA said, “This is an example of what we’d like to see in a number of communities across the US. Anytime you have local, public, private partnerships coming together it’s a good thing for the community. It’s not only cost effective but it’s efficient government in action so we are very excited.”
The federal government has still not officially turned over the plume’s oversight to the state and local alliance. The feds need to review any public comments made in July before that can happen.
