Many dilapidated properties in Blytheville have been condemned by the city council and are due to be torn down.
However, local leaders have run into many obstacles that are slowing down the process.
Blytheville Mayor James Sanders said that one of the biggest issues keeping the city from demolishing these structures is asbestos.
Asbestos is an insolation material that has been determined to be dangerous. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has very particular rules when it comes to asbestos removal before demolition. Sanders stated that even identifying asbestos is a costly endeavor; however, some city employees have recently been trained on identification but not removal.
“When we came into office there were already several houses that were under condemnation, so what we wanted to do was find a way to address the problem. I’m going to say it was probably in the upwards of 300 homes at that point and what we wanted to do then was to find a way to work with ADEQ on how we address that issue,” Sanders said.
ADEQ has a method they call “one plus one plus one” where one house on one city block per year can be removed.
Sanders stated the system is simply inefficient in Blytheville because of the large number of houses that are condemned within the city. Later this month Sanders will attend a conference in Dallas where he will meet with representatives from ADEQ to discuss how to move forward with Blytheville’s condemned housing problem.
The Greater Blytheville Area Chamber of Commerce is pitching in with a new program: “It’s Our Town: Rebuild, Restore, Renew.”
The Chamber of Commerce is currently in phase one of this project, the purchasing of damaged and dilapidated properties within Blytheville. The next step will be to tear these properties down and build new affordable housing in their place.
Nucor Steel Arkansas and Nucor-Yamato have already given their support for the program.
Mayor Sanders hopes to have more information from ADEQ when he goes to Dallas.
“We run into these issues and the burden to clean it up is basically on the taxpayers now…because of that people are walking away from it and it is becoming a city problem…so far we’ve found that we were going to lose a lot of money on another project we had just to have a company come in and say, ‘Hey asbestos is in there. So I called ADEQ and said let’s look at these problems and find solutions,” Sanders said.
Sanders also stated that, as of right now, no money has been set aside by the city for demolition of condemned structures. The council, however, continues to condemn multiple structures every month during the full council meeting.
City Attorney Chris Brown explained that once a property is condemned, the property owner is given notice and the city has to follow regulations, such as the ones imposed by ADEQ, afterwards the city is allowed to do what is necessary to correct the condition of the property.
After the city does the work it will place a lien on the property to recover the costs of the clean up.
“As far as collecting that, there is a high likelihood that going back after you demolished the properties you probably aren’t going to be able to get any money back…some property owners you won’t be able to find and some of them won’t have any money. As far as collecting on the back end that will probably be pretty difficult,” Brown said.
Brown stated that the properties can be demolished at any time after being condemned and checked for asbestos.
Since Brown has been employed as city attorney the last two years, he believes the city has condemned around 150 properties and he is not aware of any that have been done any time lately.
gwilliams@blythevillecourier.com