National Clothesline

It’s been a decade since the North Carolina General Assembly began putting a plan in effect to offer relief for state drycleaners facing the potentially staggering costs of cleaning up solvent-contaminated sites.

In that time, the legislative wheels have turned frustratingly slow.

Currently, the North Carolina Dry-Cleaning Solvent Cleanup Act Program’s web site claims that the state is comprised of approximately 900 active and abandoned drycleaning sites. Of those, there are over 220 locations identified by the Department of Environmental Resources (DENR) as having “possible drycleaning solvent contamination.”

To combat the problem, the Solvent Cleanup program was designed to provide a fund, administered by the DENR, to assess and clean up contaminated drycleaning plants using state-lead contractors.

The money for the cleanup fund itself is derived from a sales tax on drycleaning, as well as drycleaning solvents (both perchloroethylene and petroleum-based solvents).

Almost three years ago, it was reported that the program would begin spending $80 million to clean up groundwater contamination on hundreds of current and abandoned plants, but, since then, writing the rules so the process of acting on sites has been slow.

The North Carolina Association of Launderers and Cleaners is hoping to speed things up again so the Solvent Cleanup Act can move forward with cleaning up sites and issuing “No Further Action” letters.

In NCALC’s October monthly newsletter, Carolina Clean, Executive Director Sto Fox appealed to members to step up with financial contributions to help fund the ongoing legal battles.

He wrote: “Our ability to continue this work is dependent on the financial support we receive from North Carolina drycleaners and solvent distributors who the program protects.

The NCALC board of directors projected legal expenses of $25,000 this year and set a goal to raise this amount of money. To date, pledges to the fund are $17,400 and collections are $14,125. We need your help to reach our goal and be in a position to continue our work in 2007.”

All funds raised will support the association’s volunteers, staff and lawyer/lobbyist Sam Taylor, all of whom are working with other stakeholders and the North Carolina DENR to draft the final set of rules and navigate their way through the complex approval process.

“We certainly can’t quit now,” Fox added. “We’ve come too far and we’re too close to our goals of cleaning up historical contamination, minimizing the risk and occurrence of further contamination, freeing up contaminated sites in commerce, restoring landlord’s confidence in drycleaning tenants and protecting drycleaners from financial disaster resulting from a cleanup.”

NCALC has made downloadable pledge forms available online at its web site, www.ncalc.org.

To access it, click on the “Carolina Clean” link from the homepage’s site index. From there, click on the “October 2006” issue link. The form is accessible in the newsletter’s first story.

For more information on the progress of the North Carolina Dry Cleaning Solvent Cleanup Program, visit the DENR’s official site located at www.ncdsca.org.