Wyoming GM plant in clean-up plan

WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) - The GM stamping plant on 36th Street in Wyoming is included in the plan to clean up closed GM sites in 14 states, an administration official confirmed Tuesday.

The Obama administration is proposing a trust fund of more than $800 million to pay for the clean up of closed General Motors sites.

One year after the massive GM plant shutdown, Wyoming neighbors applaud the plan to get the plant ready for the future.

"I guess it's something somebody's got to do, because the property values are going to go down (and) the taxpayers are going to suffer for something that GM made big money off of over the years," long-time neighbor Roger Wangerin said.

Growing up next door, he considered the plant a good neighbor, but didn't know what flowed beneath it -- a potential carcinogen -- and under some of his neighbor's homes.

"I didn't know that was happening," Wangerin said. "Obviously, no one did."

Ed Montgomery, who leads the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, said the fund would clean up nearly 90 properties shuttered in the GM bankruptcy.

More than half of the sites are in Michigan.

"They're going to put $800 million that's in residual from the bankruptcy into a trust, to allow those of us who have these older facilities to be able to clean them up and put them back into good use," Gov. Jennifer Granholm said.

The plant was the focus of a Target 8 investigation last year that detailed scores of contaminated sites in West Michigan. A cleaning solvent known as TCE in the groundwater spread beneath 15 homes to the north.

"I wouldn't think it's fair for the taxpayers to have to deal with it, but that's usually how the cleanups end up," Wangerin said. "Government money is our money."

The funding comes from $1.2 billion provided by the Treasury Department to wind down the "bad" assets of GM set aside in the company's bankruptcy last year.

24 Hour News 8 reporter Ken Kolker contributed to this story.