Just two weeks after the Long Beach City Council heard a report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informing them that large areas of wetlands property the City will be acquiring as part of a proposed land swap are contaminated with large levels of pollutants, the owner of that property informed city officials yesterday that the exchange must enter escrow by December 31 or the deal is off.
The EPA is still examining more than one dozen sites on the property and say that full testing could take more than one year.
Tom Dean, the owner of the wetlands-area property, issued a similar deadline to the City Council in August. Dean threatened to pull his offer from the table if the Council did not approve the deal in their meeting that evening – despite growing concerns that the City would be giving too much away for land that may (and we know now, does) include high levels of contaminants.
Dean issued that warning through an interview with the lbpost.com, which you can read by clicking here.
The Press-Telegram‘s Joe Segura has the rest of today’s story in this article.