Reply #4: Welcome to my local area! [View All]

[davsand]

We have an old Air Force Base here in our county. It has been designated as a superfund site and not a THING has been done to clean it up...

http://cfpub1.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0501172

I do real estate assessments for the county property tax assessor. Part of my job is to value "leasehold" property (a specific term in Illinois Property Tax code that is, essentially, Government owned land that is leased out to individuals and used for private profit.)

I was sent out to value properties on the old Air Base one day. On my map it showed a leasehold to be valued that was WAY back on a small road. That particular road was chained off with great big toxic hazard signs on it. The lake that is in that same area had HUGE warning signs not to drink the water or eat anything out of that lake...

Needless to say, I did NOT put on a HazMat suit to go put a value on that parcel of property.

What is so pathetic is that there are large amounts of land up there that are in similar shape. The local village is scared to death that the Federal Government will default on cleaning that mess up and they will be stuck with it.


Laura