KANSAS CITY, Missouri - The developer of the Citadel Plaza has reached a settlement agreement with the state which will cost the Community Development Corporation of Kansas City (CDC-KC) $450,000 for violating Missouri asbestos laws.

The terms of the agreement include requirements that the CDC-KC employ state of the art green standards and adopt energy efficient green guidelines in building the proposed Citadel Plaza, to be built at Prospect Avenue and 63rd Street. In addition, the CDC-KC will take on other environmental projects, including the provision of grants to remove asbestos from five inner city homes.

$100,000 of the $450,000 agreement will be spent on green initiatives at the Citadel Plaza, which will be Kansas City’s first residential-retail combination project.

Another $300,000 will be spent removing the asbestos that remains at the building site, and the CDC-KC will pay a civil penalty of $50,000 for their violation. They penalty will be paid to the Jackson County School Fund.

CDC-KC is a non-profit developer for the $85 million redevelopment project, the Citadel Plaza. When complete, the Citadel will include a 35 acre shopping center, grocery store, restaurants and other retail stores. The project has been in the planning stages since the 1990s, but construction has yet to begin.

In 2006, the CDC-KC was accused of a number of asbestos violations that included tearing down over 100 homes and burying tons of asbestos on site. They were also accused of leaving tons of asbestos “lying around the neighborhood” where children often played.

Among the charges to which the CDC-KC agreed were that they failed to:

• Notify the city at least ten days in advance that an asbestos project was starting
• Inspect homes for asbestos before demolition
• Remove asbestos containing materials from structures before demolition
• Adequately wet asbestos containing materials to keep the asbestos from becoming airborne
• Have a trained asbestos remover on site during the removal
• Remove the asbestos containing materials to an approved landfill

State officials said that the asbestos contamination site may be the largest ever prosecuted in a residential area. The state is using the opportunity to raise awareness about the dangers of asbestos and help reduce the problem in the state. In a case of a punishment that fits the crime, CDC-KC is required to spend $100,000 on environmentally friendly projects including:

• grants to remove asbestos from at least five home
• a web site and pamphlets to help people identify and manage urban environmental risks
• meetings to help educate the general community about environmental risks

The agreement has been praised by some environmentalists as a “catalyst for a lot of positive change in other city projects”. Originally, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources had sought a cash penalty of $250,000, but CDC-KC appealed to the attorney general’s office and reached the above agreement.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Asbestos Litigation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.