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July 29, 2010

Elk Rapids Twp. seeks help with cleanup

Sportsman's Club contaminated with lead

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com

ELK RAPIDS — Taxpayers in Elk Rapids Township will decide if they should chip in about $800,000 toward a $1.1 million cleanup of lead contamination at the former Elk Rapids Sportsman's Club.

The township will ask voters on Tuesday for a 0.5-mill levy for seven years that will raise $112,000 its first year. The millage would cost the owner of a home with a taxable value of $75,000 an additional $37.50 a year in property taxes.

The township wants the money to remove lead bullets from the 11-acre public park site along U.S. 31 north of Elk Rapids Village that it allowed the gun club to use for about 60 years.

Township Supervisor Bill White said residents have been pretty quiet about the township's first request for an extra-voted millage for the site. It's one of three millage requests on the ballot.

"We haven't heard people clamoring to say 'yes' and we haven't heard a big outcry saying 'no,'" White said of the cleanup. "The biggest response I've heard is that it's something that's got to be done whether we pass the millage or not."

Cleanup efforts are the result of a lengthy legal battle between the township and the heirs of Mina Wilcox, who argued that Wilcox donated the property in 1948 to be used as a park and not a gun club. A judge ruled in favor of the family while the township spent more than $70,000 in legal fees to fight the case. The gun club was finally evicted in 2006, and the Michigan Department of Community Health two years later formally designated the site as a public health hazard due to widespread lead contamination.

The township will truck to a landfill three inches of top soil from the entire parcel along with berms gun club members shot into. Hoped-for grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency never materialized, and the gun club no longer exists, leaving the township with the entire tab, White said.

It spent $200,000 on cleanup work last year and will spend another $100,000 this year from its fund balance. White said the most it can afford in the future is about $50,000 a year, and at that rate it will take more than 15 years to complete.

Township resident Greg Reisig, chairman of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, said the property needs to get cleaned up but isn't sure taxpayers should bear the burden.

"The gun club was allowed to set up shop for 60 years, they were able to pollute the area and then leave," Reisig said. "Shouldn't they have some liability?"

Reisig said he's hearing from some residents who oppose the millage because of the way the township handled the property, specifically its continuation of costly and failed appeals.

The other millage proposals are for 0.35 mills for six years for roads to raise about $78,000 a year, and 0.2 mills to raise about $135,000 over three years for rehabilitation and maintenance of the old township hall. The historical building is more than 100 years old.

Approval of all three millages would cost the owner of a home with a taxable value of $75,000 about $79 more a year.

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