Mayor Berke needs to clean this up, or at least let us exchange houses with him for a while so he can live here and see this everyday.
Standing on the same site where Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke promised nearly two years ago to soon clean up the remnants of an abandoned textile mill, Lupton City residents Wednesday accused Berke and other city leaders of lying to them about the cleanup.
“Today, 15 months after work was supposed to start on cleaning this up, we still have this deplorable monstrosity of rubble,” said Patti Mitchell, a homeowner who has lived across from the mill site for the past 15 years. “We know there are chemicals in the ground and we know it takes time and we want it done right. But there is a lot of time that is unaccountable for after the city and county assumed this property through unpaid taxes.”
The former Dixie Yarns and R.L. Stowe thread mill, which ceased operation in 2009 after 87 years of operation, was acquired in 2012 by an Atlanta investment group that removed usable bricks, metal and wood from the abandoned plant. But that group, known as Lupton City LLC , failed to clean up the rubble left behind on the 12-acre site and ultimately lost the property when it went out of business and failed to pay local taxes.
The city and county acquired the contaminated mill site in the summer of 2017 but have not yet submitted any remediation plan to state regulators to clean up and clear the property.