Torrance Developement Halted on Palos Verdes Border-Economic Whiplash

Interesting Daily Breeze article I ran across. Locally, I guess we have our own issues to worry about from the economy.

I heard yesterday on Glenn Beck, Fox Nation that some developers are bull dozing their projects in California and saying that the Land is worth more than the completed projects. According to this Wall Street Journal article, it looks like we have another whole set of problems to deal with from lack of bank financing.

According to the Daily Breeze article some residents near the closed Sunrise Project not only had the soil tested to find Silica, normal to rock quarries but a potential carcinogenic. Some residents reported chronic sinus infections and more.

Here is a clip from the article. You can read the whole article written by Charles Bennett / Daily Breeze picked up by the Wall Street Journal at the link at the end of the quote.

"After a cash-starved developer halted construction last November of an assisted-living center here, it left a hole in the hillside that neighbors say is loosing possibly contaminated dust on their homes. Local authorities say they haven't detected any pollution. But nearby residents, citing their own tests and some health problems, are calling for an independent investigation. Several trooped recently to City Hall, demanding action.

It's another facet of the real-estate bust: Across the country, local authorities are facing a rise in complaints about environmental and safety hazards from construction sites where work has been frozen.

No one tracks precisely how many construction projects nationally have been stopped by developers midstream. But an indication of the scale comes from New York-based Real Capital Analytics Inc., which estimates that there were 3,929 distressed commercial properties across the U.S. as of March 31 -- a 55% jump since Dec. 31, 2008. Roughly a quarter of the properties involve developments, unfinished, Real Capital said.

.the site is less than 200 feet from a landfill that they already worried was leaking contaminants into the soil and water. The state in March found that groundwater below the Palos Verdes Landfill, closed in 1980, was contaminated, but said it posed no public-health threat as the water was being treated and the site monitored. Some residents are challenging that finding.

The city of Torrance approved the $8.5 million Sunrise project in 2005, and last summer bulldozers began tearing open the side of a hill. Construction halted in January, and now the site sits deserted and uncovered. Neighbors in the Country Hills subdivision say wind blows dust from the site into their homes.

Besides the problems with dust itself, neighbors worry the soil carries contaminants from the nearby landfill, even though the state review found that substances from the landfill hadn't escaped into the air.

In addition, Joan Davidson, a high-school teacher who leads a community group seeking greater safeguards from the landfill, has had soil from the site tested and found it contained high levels of crystalline silica -- 40% of the sample was silica."

Picture courtesy of the Daily Breeze

Click the whole article here to find out more:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165649273494241.htm

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