OVERLAND PARK, Kan.-The vision is compelling: A Wizard of Oz theme park materializing on the Kansas prairie near Kansas City, where the shuttered Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant once operated. Visitors strap themselves into chairs in Auntie Em's farmhouse and are tossed about by a mock tornado-complete with wind, rain, and computer-generated cows and bicycles floating around them-before landing with a thud in Munchkinland. Then, eyes agape, they follow the yellow brick road through the scarecrow's corn maze, the wicked witch's forest and, eventually, to the gleaming Emerald City.
If the Los Angeles-based Oz Entertainment Co. gets its way, the fantasy, based on L. Frank Baum's classic tale, could become reality by 2002.
But there's a catch. Before anyone lays down a yellow brick road, the polluted soil left behind by the Army will have to be cleaned up. Kansas officials and some local environmentalists want to make sure that the theme-park developers are liable for finishing the multimillion-dollar cleanup before thousands of children are exposed to something more than homesickness during their journeys to Oz.
All sides admit that the Sunflower site's contamination is serious-nitroglycerin, heavy metals, and asbestos, among other things, are in the soil. The plant, which made smokeless powder and propellants, was closed down between 1994 and 1996. "It is an environmental mess right now," Oz spokesman Steve Hale acknowledges. "In 1942, when the plant was built, we were at war, and the objective was to support the troops. The environment was not on the top of people's minds."
Developers of the Wonderful World of Oz, as the park would be known, are promising to spend tens of millions of dollars to clean up the site and to buy an insurance policy that would cover any unexpected cleanup expenses. Indeed, they are proposing that, in return for ridding the site of its pollutants, they should be given the land free.
This would be a first. In previous transfers of this kind, governmental agencies have taken over unwanted military or government land and ensured its environmental quality. But if an Oz deal goes through, the private-sector developers would be expected to do the cleanup properly. And opponents say that may be too much responsibility to place on developers whose interests lie in getting a 9,065-acre project completed and profitable.
Kansas civic leaders are excited about the possibility of building a $761 million theme park with many high-tech features in a state that ranks near the bottom in tourism. Even more important, the willingness of a private company to lay out millions of dollars for an environmental cleanup strikes many here as manna from heaven.
Indeed, if the Sunflower site were to remain in the Army's hands, it would be cleaned up-at the earliest-in 30 years, subject to the always-unpredictable annual appropriations by Congress, said Barry P. Steinberg. He is a partner in the Washington office of Kutak Rock, an Omaha, Neb., law firm that is representing the state's economic development arm-the Kansas Development Finance Authority-in the Oz negotiations. But if Oz were to be built, the site could start injecting an estimated $230 million annually into the Kansas City-area economy.
"You've got 9,000 acres that are off the tax rolls, and no one is working out there, even though the site used to employ 14,000 people," Steinberg said. "The Army has hundreds of sites competing for very scarce cleanup dollars, but we've got a developer willing to put a lot of capital into environmental remediation. Why would a public entity not be interested?"
Even so, the Oz proposal is running into opposition that, if duplicated in other communities with abandoned and contaminated military sites, could chill efforts to turn old bases into tax-generating developments.
Some of the concerns raised so far are of the type that often follow the introduction of big projects. Local residents worry about added congestion and sprawl from 3 million new visitors passing through what is now a rural area. Some doubt that the theme park will ever get off the ground; they prefer more-traditional development projects-such as suburban housing, which they feel is less likely to turn into a white elephant. And some worry about tax breaks being dangled in front of the developers, because they know that Oz executives considered, and then abandoned, a different site-in Wyandotte County, Kan., north of the current site.
The more unusual concerns, however, stem from the notion of handing over government land to a private corporation on the promise to clean it up. It's an idea that most experts agree is untested on this large a scale.
Rules governing the transfer of polluted federal lands have had a long and complicated history. The original 1980 Superfund law required contaminated government land to be fully cleaned up before it was sold or transferred to a private entity. Then, in the early 1990s, Congress loosened that restriction, allowing parcels of a site to be transferred even if the whole site was not yet cleaned up. In January 1998, Congress began allowing "early-transfer authority," under which a site could be transferred to a private party that agreed to clean it up. Oz is believed to be the first significant private developer to request that authority.
When Congress introduced the early-transfer mechanism, it proved controversial among some environmentalists and state attorneys general; they feared that states hungry for economic development might place business expediency over environmental protection.
Lenny Siegel, the executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight at San Francisco State University, said that the early-transfer authority "is fine in theory but, in this case, not in practice." He has conferred with local critics of the Oz park.
Even Siegel acknowledges that flexibility in transfer rules has worked relatively well in many cases, especially where one government entity has transferred property to a different government entity.
But with the Oz project, the stakes are higher, because the land will eventually be teeming with children. Between park visitors and residents of the housing developments that are planned for other portions of the site, more ordinary citizens would be put at risk than is typical of other redeveloped "brownfield" sites, which often are turned into industrial parks.
Critics are also skeptical that the true cost of the cleanup is yet known. An Army report issued in July, in which the service backed the Oz transfer, was short on specifics about the current state of contamination and about how much money would ultimately be needed for remediation, critics say.
"It was as if they were saying, `We'll tell you all about it later-please sign here,' " said Bill Sheldon, the president of Taxpayers Opposed to Oz, a nine-month-old group known-appropriately-as TOTO. "The Army is running at full gallop to get rid of the plant, so it does not have to spend $2 million a year to clean it up."
The critics also worry that Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, who must approve the deal, will be forced into an apparent conflict of interest. The state Legislature has already authorized $250 million in Sales Tax Accelerated Revenue bonds, which will be paid off through the tax revenues generated by the theme park and its affiliated developments.
The theme-park developer considers the STAR bonds to be the linchpin of the deal's unique nature. "For investors, knowing that the state government was standing behind this has helped increase their faith in the project," said Oz spokesman Hale.
What troubles critics is that both the state's economic development officials and its environmental regulators answer to Graves. Without an independent evaluation, the critics say, business needs could override environmental protection. The critics particularly regret the deal's lack of oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency.
"From a national point of view, the approval of this early transfer would set a dangerous precedent," Siegel said. "It's too early, there's not enough known, and conflicts of interest could undermine the protection of public health and the environment."
Steinberg, the lawyer for the Kansas economic development authority, said he understands the fears regarding the Oz proposal. In fact, he argues forcefully that both his client and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment are driving a hard bargain with Oz executives before anyone signs a deal. Indeed, the complex, multilateral negotiations between Oz and various state and federal entities have already gone on for a year.
Oz Entertainment's most recent offer was to spend $32 million to $40 million on cleanup efforts and $8.8 million on premiums for an insurance policy that would cover unexpected costs, according to published reports. But the state health department now says that the true cost could be from $90 million to $130 million for the cleanup. A deal, Steinberg said, will not go to the Governor for consideration until both economic development and health officials are satisfied that they have the details right.
"We want to make sure that even if the Oz Entertainment Co. goes away tomorrow, the bonds and insurance and contracts will continue, so that come hell or high water, the site gets cleaned up to state regulatory standards and with guaranteed financing in place," Steinberg said. "There will be no scenario in which anyone is left holding dirty property."
For their part, Oz officials hope that a deal can be signed this year and that construction can begin promptly so that the projected May 2002 opening can be achieved. Maybe it's time to click those ruby slippers together for good luck.
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