It appears those of us with concerns about North River are not alone. Today mayoral candidate Matt Kelty expressed his own concerns with environmental issues related to the purchase of the OmniSource property:
“I am particularly concerned with the environmental issues. When the North River project was unveiled several months ago, the City made mention of favorable environmental remediation efforts by OmniSource and said ‘the option agreement for the land contains environmental provisions.’ I think most of us thought that if the owner had confidence in the clean-up already performed, the City would have received some type of an indemnification from the owner—in case their confidence turns out to have been misplaced.
The agreement provided to me by the City does have a provision concerning environmental matters. The agreement states: ‘The seller will convey the property to Buyer AS IS, without any warranty as to condition or environmental matters.’ So, the City was correct in saying there is a provision. What they didn’t say is that according to the provision, the Seller is apparently unwilling to stand by any of its representations about the environmental matters or take any risk in connection with the future cleanup of the land. If we exercise this option, all of that risk moves squarely and solely to the shoulders of Fort Wayne taxpayers.“
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