Abound Solar Bankruptcy Leaves Toxic Wasteland for Taxpayers To Clean Up - Granite Grok

Abound Solar Bankruptcy Leaves Toxic Wasteland for Taxpayers To Clean Up

A Solar Plant didn’t just go bankrupt after wasting millions in Democrat backed Green energy stimulus, it left a hazardous wasteland for taxpayers to clean up as well

The Abound Solar plant, which got $400 million in federal loan guarantees in 2010, when the Obama administration sought to use stimulus funds to promote green energy, filed for bankruptcy two years later. Now its Longmont, Colo., facility sits unoccupied, its 37,000 square feet littered with hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water. The Northern Colorado Business Report estimates it will cost up to $3.7 million to clean and repair the building so it can again be leased.

“As lawyers, regulators, bankruptcy officials and the landlord spar over the case, the building lies in disrepair, too contaminated to lease,” the report stated.

The owner of the property tried to force a bankruptcy trustee to clean the facility, but the report said it would “place humans at imminent and significant health risk.” One of the hazards is the presence of cadmium, a cancer-causing agent that is used to produce the film on the solar panels, the report said.

While the loan guarantees exposed taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars, the federal government lost a total of $70 million backing the failed company. Unsold inventory which should have been used to offset those losses, including 2,000 solar panels, mysteriously disappeared, according to the National Legal and Policy Center.

“If a coal, oil or gas company pulled something like that the EPA would send out SWAT teams and the U.S. Marshals to track down the offenders, bankrupt or not,” the center said in a report of its own.

So Green is the new brown.  Or is toxic waste actually green?

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