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He says he believes ADOT knew about the pesticides in the concrete sump and refused to settle his case in order to hold him responsible for the cleanup. He suggests that the state didn’t order the Phase II audit because it knew the study would discover problems, and that the state offered him an outrageously low price for his land in order to force him into condemnation proceedings. While that litigation was dragging on, the state would begin construction of the freeway, and if an environmental problem arose, then Gabrielli would be exposed to liability for the cleanup.
There was intent there,” he says. I know we can’t prove it, but there was intent there.”
DAN GALVIN, the ADOT spokesman, has only been in Arizona since 1982, but he’s looked back at the archives.
I remember seeing a drawing of a proposed project from the late 1970s,” he says. It was an artist’s conception of how I-10 should be completed. It was supposed to be elevated, a hundred feet in the air and zip through the middle of town. And it had all these circular on-ramps winding around themselves, I think they were called heli-coils- it looked like something someone dreamed up in the 1950s as `The City of the Future.'”
Building freeways has changed a lot over the years. Once, you laid down an asphalt or concrete path, grading the land level as you went. These days, there are more and more complications, and ADOT is learning how to deal with them as it goes along, in a kind of haphazard, clumsy on-the-job training. Tom Sullivan says the department has become much more sophisticated in dealing with environmental problems since the workers broke into Gabrielli’s sump.
We know a lot more now than we did then,” he says. We’re learning every day.”
As ADOT threads the new highway system through populated areas, skirting pre-existing homes and schools and businesses, Galvin says the agency has a duty to make freeways more aesthetically appealing, less noisy, less dangerous. And all this makes them more expensive.
So ADOT tries to cut costs where it can. The agency is shorthanded in some areas; there are rumors among the staff that layoffs may be coming. In such a climate, it’s not hard to understand that the agency might be trying to cut costs wherever possible. Like not conducting an expensive Phase II audit when a Phase I might suffice. Sullivan says if the concrete sump had not been directly in the path of freeway construction, the workers would have left it undisturbed. It’s kind of fluky.
It’s obvious that Sullivan feels badly for Gabrielli. The two men are casual friends; they’ve served on various environmental boards together. Gabrielli says Sullivan will not lie for anyone.” Similarly, Sullivan thinks Gabrielli is sincere, that the situation is just one of those situations.” Sullivan is taking the heat for this one. He says ADOT should have ordered further testing. He agrees the sump could have been dealt with relatively cheaply had it been discovered earlier.
But someone will have to pay for the cleanup and the state doesn’t want it to be the taxpayers. Olin Mathieson’s position is that it didn’t make the mess. Gene Gabrielli is the current landowner and that makes him liable. It’s tough, but that’s the current state of the law.
Though, as one ADOT employee says, the state isn’t supposed to be in the business of screwing anyone. Maricopa County needs highways. It needs them now. And the county only has just so much money to spend to build them. In such circumstances, there will be collateral damage. Everyone’s sorry for Gene Gabrielli; he’s lost two years of income and he bought his land just before the bottom fell out of the real estate market. But the state’s position is that the offer it made to him was just compensation.
The state’s position is that Gabrielli should have taken what was offered him and gotten out of the way.
part 4 of 4
DRESSED TO KILL… v4-08-92
