‘Mr.Sagebrush Rebellion’ heirs to shell out millions for Ogden Swift Building Superfund cleanup
The heirs of a wealthy man who notoriously opposed the federal government will now have to pay the Environmental Protection Agency millions for the cleanup of a dilapidated building where he hoarded a mind-boggling amount of hazardous materials.
For decades, Bert Smith stored thousands of containers of flammable, corrosive and explosive chemicals at an industrial complex on the banks of the Weber River known as the Swift Building. He died in 2016. Ogden City then bought the property in 2017, largely sight unseen. But upon entering the structures, city officials found an astonishing array of substances like mercury, acids and poisons. Some of the floors of the former five-story meatpacking building had collapsed. In over their heads, the city asked EPA for help.
The agency spent much of the spring, summer and fall of 2019 removing and neutralizing dangerous chemicals from the site using its Superfund — a federal cash pool EPA taps to address expensive environmental projects, then aggressively works to refill through collections from property owners and responsible parties at those contaminated sites.
According to a consent decree signed last month, the Smith family will pony up $2.3 million and Ogden will hand over $300,000 to EPA.
A 30-day public comment period on the agreement began Oct. 10, according to the federal register. EPA’s response costs for the Swift property totaled more than $5 million, a legal complaint filed Sept. 29 notes.
Smith built a reputation as “Mr. Sagebrush Rebellion” and led a charge in Western states to seize federal public lands. He handed out pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution with annotations by the conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen. Smith also praised armed protesters like the Bundy family, who had standoffs with federal officials over unpaid grazing fees in Nevada and occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
But Smith also built his fortune through the federal government. He bought up military surplus goods after World War II and sold them at his megastore in northern Utah, Smith and Edwards.
Surplus lots are likely how Smith ended up with an arsenal of hazardous substances. Decades ago, the Department of Defense would package an assortment of goods together in its sales.
“You’d have jeeps, a desk, and all this solvent,” Paul Peronard, the EPA’s on-scene coordinator for the cleanup, explained in 2019. “So if you wanted the jeep or the desk, you had to buy the whole lot. They were pretty notorious for getting rid of all their old chemicals and stuff by making you buy the whole lot.”
From 1986 to 1989, for example, DOD sold $5 million in hazardous materials surplus. It saved the department $170 million in cleanup and disposal costs, but it made the chemicals a problem private buyers had to contend with.
Smith apparently dealt with the mess by stashing a trove of toxic containers in the Swift buildings.
Those structures, chock full of dangerous materials, caught fire and had been vandalized several times. Some were in danger of collapsing and leaking materials into the Weber River.
Ogden bought the property from Smith’s family in April 2017 for $1 million using Redevelopment Agency funds. After assessing the buildings’ contents, officials renegotiated the purchase price down to $400,000. EPA disposed of nearly 60,000 leaking, corroded containers of unsafe materials and treated about 19,000 more on-site.
The city razed the property in 2019 after completing cleanup. It is currently working with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality to assess contamination beneath the foundations of the old buildings.
Read EPA’s full complaint outlining its remediation efforts below:
Editor’s note, 4:45 p.m., Oct. 28 • This story was updated to include details about copies of the U.S. Constitution Smith distributed.
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