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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The mining-explosives plant locked up by state officials in a lease dispute with its owner, a former congressman, has come under the scrutiny of federal authorities for possible hazards left behind.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Tuesday it was investigating batches of chemicals left at the Cook Slurry Co.
Former U.S. Rep. Merrill Cook, the owner of the company, insisted Tuesday he left explosive ingredients secure at the Utah County plant. He said he had been forced off the 480-acre parcel of land in September for refusing to pay a 26,000-percent rent hike but was suing to get back in business. He denied any federal agencies were involved in a cleanup assessment.
ATF spokeswoman Carrie DiPirro, however, confirmed to The Associated Press her agency was investigating the explosive plant's potential hazards. DiPirro said her agency was assisting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"We have a reason to be concerned about the site," said Paul Peronard, an emergency-response coordinator for the EPA.
"We have been out there, and we're in the middle of an investigation." He said he couldn't comment further.
Cook said the ingredients he stored for explosives were kept in separate tanks and were dangerous only when combined. DiPirro confirmed that ingredients kept separately are inert.
Cook assailed his landlord, a state agency called the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, for "just harassing us to no end."
The trust-lands administration, he said, has been trying to kick him off the land with "outrageous" rent hikes for years to make way for more lucrative real-estate development.
The agency has been raising costs for many of its leaseholders lately to reflect "market" conditions. In Cook's case, the rent would spiral to more than $1.2 million a year from $4,560.
"Look, they locked us out of our plant way before our time was up," Cook said. "This has been one of the biggest outrages in the history of business in Utah."
Cook's company had operated under a 49-year lease since 1978, and he said his company was once the second-largest supplier of mining explosives. He said the state agency had the right to raise his rent every five years, but only for increases appropriate for an industrial tenant, and not for the land's real-estate value.
The dispute started in 2002, when the trust-lands administration tried to impose a steep rent hike and Cook said he blocked it in court. Around the same time, he said, the agency tried to make life difficult for the company by telling local officials and the company's lender that the company wouldn't occupy the land for long. Cook said his plant hasn't been actively producing explosives since 2002.
The company left "significant environmental contamination" at the site, officials for the trust-land administration told their board of directors last week.
"We are going to clean it up," John Andrews, the agency's associate director and general counsel, told the AP on Tuesday.
The administration has hired an environmental consultant. Andrews said actual cleanup could be paid first by the EPA but that it eventually would seek reimbursement from the company and the state agency.
Cook exploded in anger at those statements, at first asserting, "I am no polluter. I have never been a polluter," then accusing the trust-lands administration of waging a campaign to discredit him.
"There's absolutely no contamination whatsoever. We kept everything fine up there," Cook said. "This is nothing more than manipulation on the part of SITLA."
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
