Thursday's column on Wednesday! About the Trop, just one little detail...

Last July 27, the state sent a letter to the city of St. Petersburg about environmental problems on the site of Tropicana Field.

In that letter, the Department of Environmental Protection asked the city for a deed restriction that would restrict future uses of the site, “to prevent exposure to contaminated soil.”

The letter said that the DEP has been seeking such a deed restriction since the year 2000, but that the city has not complied.

In a follow-up letter just three weeks ago, on May 8, the DEP wrote to the city giving it 60 days to execute the deed restriction.

This is relevant, as you know, because selling off Tropicana Field to developers is a key part of the current proposal for a new baseball stadium in St. Petersburg.

I asked a DEP spokeswoman, Pamela Vazquez, what all this means. She said it means that the blacktop parking lot at the Trop needs to stay put, at least until a new permit applicant satisfies the department otherwise.

“For example, if someone said, we want to lift that parking lot and put condos there,” Vazquez told me, “we would want that property to be remediated to residential levels.”'

As my colleague Aaron Sharockman reported in Wednesday’s newspaper, the city says that it considers the DEP’s request for a deed restriction to be “voluntary,” and does not intend to comply.

In one sense, this is not a shock or an automatic deal-breaker. The Tropicana site was used for many purposes over the decades, and there are all sorts of chemicals in the ground, albeit at safe levels, so they say. So any future use would certainly have to satisfy the DEP anyway.

On the other hand…

It is a little late in this deal to be finding out that the state has been seeking a deed restriction on the property for the past eight years.

No, wait. It’s not just “a little late.” It is jaw-dropping ridiculous, is what it is.

The St. Petersburg City Council will vote just one week from today on whether to start the process of calling an election on the new stadium deal.

I asked a couple of City Council members what they knew about this. Karl Nurse, said he learned about it last week. Herb Polson did not know about it at all.

I also called Michael T. Harrison, a senior vice president of Hines, one of the developers in talks with the city.

“I have no idea of what you’re talking about, so I’m the wrong person to ask,” Harrison said. “Ask the city.”

Let’s bend over backwards here. Let’s suppose that this DEP letter is just a nuisance, an obstacle to be overcome.

Still, you would think it would have come up by now.

For eight years, the DEP has sought a deed restriction on Tropicana Field.

This demand was renewed last July — while the city was still busy keeping the stadium plan secret. And the demand was renewed again just three weeks ago.

And this never came up?

Members of the City Council didn’t know? Citizens kept coming to meetings and asking about environmental issues at the Tropicana site, and this was not Topic A?

Really?

Comments

“The letter said that the DEP has been seeking such a deed restriction since the year 2000, but that the city has not complied.”

I submit that this may speak to exactly how long this deal may has been in the works at some level or another… more importantly, how long it has been kept hidden from the public.

"The letter said that the DEP has been seeking such a deed restriction since the year 2000, but that the city has not complied."

"... the city has not complied..."

How long has Pinellas County "owned" the land?

... I smell an out. And you can be darn sure they'll use it.

[Steve Lange]

Howard, with the exception of Leslie Curran who was absent during my May 22nd FDEP contamination and deed restriction speech, all of the other city council members, the mayor, legal department and the entire city administration heard about it from me during my three minute public hearing speech. I read it to them. They knew as of that moment that the city has been stone walling the FDEP for over eight years. I then turned in the entire FDEP letter to the city clerk to insure that the letter became current public records. I did this so everyone could get a copy if they chose to.

Does anyone remember any city official asking me one question about this issue when I had concluded my speech?

Keep in mind that all of the FDEP Trop contamination correspondence has been addressed to Mr. Carlos Frey, a long time City of St. Pete employee and copied to everyone in the city on the who's who list.

This was no secret. No secret at all.

Just another one of the recent cover ups we have discovered.

Isn't it interesting now, today, this very minute, that all of the apparent corruption is being done in the name of Rays baseball. Must make the Rays ownership feel real good to see all of this coming out now as it has. And so early in the game so to speak.

By the time all of the folks like me quit digging for information this deal will be D.O.A.

[Sabine]

8 years? Not bad, given it took 16 years to warn the Azelea neighborhood of the Raytheon contamination.

[Sabine]

Pretty cavalier of Mike Conners, the City's Internal Services Administrator, to say: "We're not interested in pursuing something that appears to be voluntary on our part." The letters didn't sound like it was voluntary. The 2007 letter stated "Continued failure to comply with your Consent Order may subject The City of St. Petersburg to enforcement action by the Department."

Then, like the Raytheon/Azelea situation, the FDEP waited a year to follow up, and the City blew them off again. Who has any clout in this state?

[John]

Howard,

What do you think the chances of the Rays abandoning this project in the coming weeks?

I mean, we have this bombshell, that the city might now lean on the Rays to "drop it" to save themselves from further exposure and embarrasment over ignoring the DEP all these years with county-owned land.

Related to that, we have sunshine law issues with the city & mayor keeping this secret from the citizens for...how long??? You could say the deal was well in the works at least a few years ago when the Rays "decided to build their fan base" by moving spring training to Port Charlotte to "coincidentaly" leave Al Lang languishing as a "vacant cherry waiting to be picked"...

We all know the TDC and BOCC are formidable barriers, so much so that the Rays had to hire the gunslinger Ed Armstrong to deal with them...

And of course, we have the overwhelming opposition (see: Save Albert Whitted) who are becoming increasingly more and more vocal with each meeting.

Is it truly "3 strikes and you're out"??

[get-smart]

Sabine - Fining the city is fining the taxpayers. We need to go downtown and take charge. We need to rid ourselves of this mayor and his staff. These guys have been paid off by the Rays and they are all self serving.

[guy]

We all got the message very clear from Mr. Lange.
I don't think we need a John Deere Tractor to dig up more dirt so to speak, nor more open opposition for the council to drop this subject and forget about a vote on it,
Lets go for a new spring training team for Al Lang field.
Lets get back to being a little laid back and support the team at the Trop.

[John]

I second Guy. Bring Spring Training Back!!! We already have an awesome, HISTORIC waterfront ballpark built to scale, with no major "issues", and the best time of year to sit there and cheer on your team is SPRING!!!!

[Don in St. Pete]

What a surprise! No wonder Baker has been hiding behind the drapes in his office from this issue. Voters, please keep all this in mind the next time Baker runs for public office.

[Howard Troxler]

Howard here in reply to Steve Lange. This is a very interesting phenomenon, that something can be said plainly and out loud and be made part of the record, and yet nobody "hear" it.

When I first mentioned this DEP letter to someone I knew, she immediately said, "I heard about that during the public hearing." I asked if she was sure, because it was news to me, but she insisted.

Here is what I guess. I think that when a mere citizen stands up and says something specific like that at a public hearing, everybody's ears glaze over and they think, "This citizen cannot possibly have any actual technical knowledge."

I am as guilty of this as anybody else, too. I kept hearing the general speculation about liability at the Trop site, and more or less summed it up in my head as, "This is something to be dealt with in the contract." It basically took somebody shoving the DEP letter in front of my face to get it through my thick head.

Dear Howard, you said:

"I am as guilty of this as anybody else, too. I kept hearing the general speculation about liability at the Trop site, and more or less summed it up in my head as, "This is something to be dealt with in the contract." It basically took somebody shoving the DEP letter in front of my face to get it through my thick head.:

This is the problem that advocates face day in and day out when it goes against the grain of government, corporate interests or LACK OF INTEREST. You can't just jump up and down and say "listen to me" if you personally have no power. That's where folks like you come in.....you have immense power by your printed word. So that's WHY we assail you, and indeed, sometimes criticize you...........because we so desperately need the power of your voice. And when you choose to listen, we breathe a sigh of relief. The power that you hold is immense, and indeed a great burden at times.....................

And that's why we love you.....because you choose to go to that place of juxtaposition of choice and action.......and continued thought.

Lorraine

[Don Mott]

Thank you Mr Lange for all of your time and effort!

[Paul]

I too heard you mention the DEP letters during your 3 minutes of time.... and wondered what happened to it falling on deaf ears. I also clearly recall the City person (not sure of his name) answering the question, 'to what level has the Trop been mitigated? Industrial, residential?' and his response was 'all of them'.

B u s t e d !

and yes, any FDEP fines imposed on the City comes out of us citizens' pockets. As we pay the taxes its our City and thus we the citizens will foot the bill.

[since1962]

Howard
Shame on you and the Times dwindling staff! Lazy reporters requiring citizens to shove easily accesible documents under their noses before reporting can commence!

[Howard Troxler]

Yep, that's me, lazy.

'Scept that I always got this long list of stuff to be finding out about, and I am constantly indeed finding it out, except not always in the order that people want.

And if concerned citizens are out there rooting up other stuff, all the better... the more the merrier, seems to me.... if you'd like me to ignore the next citizen who's come up with something good, no offense, but I'm probably not gonna.

Howard,

Did Pamela say yea or nay regarding any enforcement penalties if the city does not initiate the deed restriction process within that 60 day period?? Is there any penalty for non-compliance?? Or did that not come up in your conversation with her??

Lorraine

[since62]

where are the Woodwards & Bernsteins when we need them?
Didn't Scott Mclellan recently ask the same question and hasn't the media responded defensivly while lambasting the White House response?

[Alex]

I think Woodward & Bernstein are covering the Hogan vehicle dilemmas! In fact, I think deep throat… ahhh, never mind…

[None of the Above]

And Voila…Another Shoe Drops…

Let’s Review…

Possible Serious, Costly Environmental Issues…and more obfuscation (of Course)…

Matched against…

NO Real Need for a New Stadium;

NO True Support (or Means in the amount necessary) to Fund It;

NO Open and Honest Brokers for It on the Affirmative Side;

NO Reason Whatsoever to Go Forward, at This Time, On this Timetable, During This Economy, for "Project Ridiculous".

Might I suggest that beginning in July, all those fine folks who say that an outdoors stadium, in Florida, in the middle of Summer, would be just wonderful to watch a game in, do the following:

Get your group together, take an umbrella, and “attempt” to sit in the stands at Al Lang during the current game times at that time.

How much you wanna bet it’ll take less than a month of actually trying this for the sanest among them (if there are any) to realize just how much this is to become “Baker’s Folly”. And that still leaves August and September.

Not to mention what to do with it if the Team leaves.

Someone's gonna owe me $1000!

[Steve Lange]

Lorraine:

You are correct that the City has 60 days from the May 8, 2008 letter to comply with filing the deed restriction on the Tropicana Field site contamination issue.

If the City does not comply, fines could be assigned.

While I did not notice this potentiality in the FDEP letter, it could have been hidden is the State Statues and FDEP guidelines quoted.

Howard, I too would be interested to hear from you if you know the answer to this.

[Steve Lange]

Don:

You are welcome.