Photo supplied, Dallas Casey

OGDEN — Ogden City’s cost for its environmentally troublesome Swift Building project has reached nearly $6.4 million, and officials say more expenses are expected, depending on the outcomes of groundwater testing and a potential thicket of litigation.

After hearing from disgruntled residents in a public hearing and giving their own lamentations, city council members voted 7-0 Tuesday night to spend $2.08 million for the costs of digging up a leaking petroleum tank and shoring up the adjacent bank of the Weber River. The city from 2017 through 2021 spent $4.3 million to buy and demolish the century-old former meatpacking plant and do initial environmental cleanup.

“Looking back at what we did find under Pandora’s lid, it was the right thing to do,” council member Richard Hyer said. “We had to clean up that mess. That was going to be a disaster if we hadn’t done it.”

The city paid Utah Smith LLC $400,000 for the building and site, intending to demolish the structure and sell the acreage, at 390 W. Exchange Road, to developers as part of the city’s Trackline redevelopment area. But inside the building, workers found dozens of drums of chemicals, surplus military gear and debris that had been collected over decades. That resulted in an Environmental Protection Agency cleanup of the building before demolition.

City Attorney Gary Williams told the council his office is negotiating with other parties with potential liabilities for the site, including Utah Smith and Smith & Edwards Co., over the estimated $5 million cost for the EPA’s cleanup.

Photo supplied, Dallas Casey

“Of course, they are all pointing fingers at everybody else, including us as well,” he said. “It’s going to be a complicated negotiation, likely followed by litigation.”

So the city’s eventual price tag for its share of the EPA work will be unknown potentially for years.

The second area of future expense is the city’s next phase of remediation of the 7-acre Swift site. Brandon Cooper, the city’s Community and Economic Development Department director, told the council the city is drilling groundwater monitoring placements, under coordination with state environmental officials.

If no groundwater pollutants are found, the city will be able to close the site and sell it for development, but otherwise it will mean more cleanup.

“Once we receive the data on what we find in those borings, we will create a remedial action plan,” he said. “That could consist of anything from hauling away dirt to groundwater monitoring over time and other remedial activities that are consistent with what is found.”

Image supplied, Ogden City Council

Angel Castillo, a former mayoral candidate, urged the council during the public hearing to review the process officials have used during the Swift project. “We cannot continue to do things the way that we’ve been doing them,” she said, like other speakers voicing questions about the escalating costs.

“Is there a policy change we can make that would help this sort of situation in the future?” resident Heath Satow asked the council. “It’s a little scary that that situation just sat there for decades. Now it’s costing us so much money.”

Cooper defended the project, saying, “The budget was projected at the front end of this, but we did not know we would have a leaking underground storage tank. There was no evidence of it above ground. It was actually under the foundation of a building.”

He added, “I think we all collectively understood this was something we couldn’t accurately predict. We could at least walk through the steps together and we did.”

In an interview Wednesday, Cooper said none of the petroleum from the leaking tank reached the river. He said the $2.08 million expenditure approved Tuesday covers the excavation and cleanup of the tank, plus excavation of a swath of the riverbank along the Swift site’s western property line down to the waterline.

Image supplied, Ogden City Council

Further, 16- to 20-foot steel panels were installed to act as a barrier between the river and the site to prevent any potential groundwater pollutants from reaching the river. Cooper said the tank project also dovetailed with work that resulted in the reopening of the Ogden Kayak Park.

Although costs have been greater than expected, Cooper said he’s happy with the Swift project and the way it has progressed. “It protects the health and safety of the public,” he said. “Unfortunately, there had been years of neglect by the property owners and others.”

In the council meeting, council Chair Ben Nadolski said, “It’s hard to keep putting money in this one.” But Cooper said the new spending “gets us to a point where the worst is behind us.”

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