Connecticut Town Council Rejects Offer for Mill Site

Despite a desire to sell the property, the New Milford, Ct., Town Council has rejected an offer by Bronx County Recycling LLC, a  New York company,  to buy the former Century brass mill.

The 72-acre site is industrially zoned. However, town leaders do not want to accept just any offer. The council wants to recoup money it invested to clean up the polluted site and have a say in how a buyer uses the property.

The council spent less than 10 minutes in a closed-door session before rejecting the offer from Bronx County Recycling LLC to purchase the property, which is a brownfield site. The recycling company made its offer despite the fact an environmental remediation project that is just starting could cost as much as $800,000.

Those costs do not cover replacing the roof on a warehouse building at the site and other remediation work that could cost $2 million or more.

A cleanup of heavy metals and other pollutants cost $3.85 million, town officials said. Federal and state grants as well as a $1 million revolving load from the federal Environmental Protection Agency funded the cleanup.

Bronx County offered to buy the property for $700,000, with $200,000 as a down payment with up to two years to close. It proposed paying the balance upon completion of remediation. It also sought a five-year tax abatement.

The company planned to use the site to stockpile, process and distribute dirt, concrete and stone products used for construction; indoor reclamation of recyclables from construction and demolition debris; processing and stockpiling and distribution of top soil and stockpiling and distribution of salt.

In a letter of intent mailed to Town Council, Bronx County Recycling LLC said it believed even though the eight-acre warehouse still contains asbestos and PCBs — with the entire roof in need of replacement — it could use the land surrounding the building to meet "needs in the regional market."

Representatives of Bronx Recycling waited through the three-hour council meeting to hear from Mayor Patricia Murphy the council was not interested.

While neither encouraging or discouraging Bronx County Recycling representatives, Mayor Murphy suggested the kind of recycling operation they propose is not what the town has in mind for that site. The industrial zone also does not allow for recycling. Danbury News Times