Dunn County facilities committee to pursue sale of transfer station
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Facilities Committee has decided not to do a Phase 2 inspection on the property formerly used as the solid waste and recycling transfer station and to pursue selling it “as is.”
The quote for conducting a Phase 2 inspection would be $8,400, said Scott Nabbefeld, Dunn County director of facilities and parks, at the Dunn County Facilities Committee meeting May 22, during an agenda item for an update on the transfer station.
The inspection would determine what contamination exists, if any, at the transfer station and would use soil borings, and would test run-off areas and well water at the site, he said.
If contamination is found at the transfer station, then Dunn County would have to report the contamination to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and would have to pay the cost of cleaning up the contamination, Nabbefeld said.
The property also could be left “as is” and sold to someone who would agree to clean up the contamination if there is any, or it could be leased, he said.
The former solid waste and recycling transfer station west of Menomonie on state Highway 29 is a 10-acre site, with an additional 20-acre parcel next to it that was purchased a few years back with the intention of someday building a state-of-the-art transfer station.
The existing transfer station was designed to be used for 15 years, but the property was actually in use as a transfer station for 30 years.
The transfer station closed as of January 1, 2021, after member municipalities withdrew from Dunn County’s solid waste and recycling program to become their own “responsible units” for recycling.
The uncertainty of whether the per capita for member municipalities was going to increase from $23 to $60 or $80 or perhaps $100 created too much of a budgeting problem for municipalities under the state’s property tax levy limit.
State law requires all municipalities to either be their own responsible unit or to sign on as part of another municipality’s responsible unit.
Heavy contamination
Barbara Lyon, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the facilities committee, asked if there was any danger of the kind of contamination that might be considered a “Brownfield” site that would require intense clean up.
Nabbefeld said when he met with representatives of the company that would conduct the Phase 2 inspection, “nothing popped out” to indicate that there was contamination at the site.
“But you [would] never know until some testing is done,” he said.
The question before the facilities committee is whether to test or not to test, said Ann Vogl, county board supervisor from Menomonie and chair of the facilities committee.
Larry Bjork, county board supervisor from the Town of Spring Brook and a member of the facilities committee, said he did not think the transfer station property should be tested.
There are capital improvement needs for the county for which there is not enough money, and if contamination was found, that would mean even less money for other projects, he said.
Testing for contamination at the transfer station is not a project to get into if you do not know if will cost $8,400 or $1 million, Bjork said.
“I would urge [us] not to open up that can of worms,” he said.
As is
Is it possible to put the transfer station up for sale “as is,” asked Randy Prochnow, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the facilities committee.
Whether to sell the transfer station “as is” was the original question to the facilities committee, Nabbefeld said.
Someone was interested in purchasing the transfer station and would take on the liability of it “as is.” Finding out about the Phase 2 inspection was part of deciding what to do next, he said.
Prochnow said in his opinion, the transfer station should be put out for bids “as is,” and if the county does not get an acceptable bid, then negotiate for the sale of the property.
Since there is a buyer who was already interested, Prochnow said he would be more inclined to pursue that route of selling the transfer station.
Lyon asked about the potential buyer’s plans for the property.
The person who had been interested in buying the transfer station owns a business in Menomonie and was looking for a place for storage, Nabbefeld said.
When the discussion started about whether to lease or sell the transfer station, the committee “got stuck” about whether it could be leased or sold without knowing the level of contamination, Vogl said.
DNR
Nabbefeld said representatives from the DNR have told him the county can sell the property without knowing the contamination.
The Phase 1 inspection looked at what the property was used for previously, which was farmland, and then reviewed the use as a transfer station, he said.
A Phase 2 inspection would find out if there is any contamination. If there is contamination, then it must be cleaned up, Nabbefeld said.
If the transfer station is sold “as is,” then the buyer must take on any liability for the contamination, and cleaning up any contamination that might be there would have to be included in the purchase agreement, he said.
Dollar amount
Ron Score, county board supervisor from Boyceville and a member of the facilities committee, asked if there was a dollar amount that had been determined to be the value of the transfer station.
The sale price has yet to be determined, or the property could be put out for bids, or the county could negotiate with a buyer and not necessarily put it out for bids, Nabbefeld said.
Vogl said that what she was hearing from committee members is that they did not want to do the Phase 2 inspection.
“So, do we want to sell it?”she asked.
The committee could make a recommendation not to do the Phase 2 inspection and to go forward with selling the property, Nabbefeld said.
Bids
Bjork said he was not interested in selling the property, but that if the committee did decide to sell the property, “it would be foolish not to put it out for bids.”
Disgruntled people would be wondering why the county “made a sweetheart deal” with a certain buyer and did not let everyone else know the property was for sale, he said.
If the property was put up for sale by bid, and the bids that came back were not acceptable, the county could reject the bids, but everyone would have a chance to bid, Bjork said.
Score asked about how the property was zoned, and Nabbefeld said he did not know the current zoning.
Prochnow, who is an assessor, said the 10-acre parcel is not zoned as agricultural land, but the 20-acre parcel next to it is agricultural.
The person who expressed interest in the transfer station also expressed interest in the 20 acres, Nabbefeld said.
Whether the 20-acres also would be sold is a decision to be made by the Dunn County Board, he said.
In March of 2017, the Dunn County Board approved purchasing the 20 acres for $8,750 per acre from Justin Merritt for a total price of $175,000.
The townships now have their own solid waste and recycling programs, so the transfer station will not go back to county use as a solid waste and recycling facility, Prochnow said.
The decision was made initially to lease the transfer station, then the question came up about the county’s liability, so now the county is exploring the options again, Nabbefeld said.
Appraisal
If the county is going to sell the property “as is,” then “we need to find out what it is worth,” Lyon said.
Does Dunn County have any use for it? Score asked.
The cost to fix the building would be something like $200,000, Vogl said.
When solid waste and recycling closed, the estimate was $225,000 to complete repairs, but that cost is probably higher now, Nabbefeld said.
The county highway department had planned to use it for storage, “but that did not happen,” he said, adding that there have been no proposals for using the transfer station property since then.
During one of her reports, Kristin Korpela, county manager, had said the property would need a run-off retention pond, Vogl said.
The transfer station was built in the 1990s, and the property would need a run-off retention pond, except there is not enough room on the current property to put a retention pond. It was used twice as long as it should have been, and the 20-acres was intended as the site for a new transfer station where a state-of-the-art facility could be built on a better site, Nabbefeld said.
The facilities committee will have to make a recommendation to look at assessing the value of the property, Vogl said.
The property should be appraised, and then the committee can make a recommendation about how to proceed with selling the transfer station, Nabbefeld said.
The transfer station was included on the agenda for the May 22 meeting of the Dunn County Facilities Committee as an “update on the transfer station” that had been requested by the chair of the committee but was not on the agenda as an action item.
