If city leaders want to convert the vacant Farmland Industries plant into a new business park, they may have to be willing to put taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up the environmentally blighted property.

At least that’s how the regulatory winds out of Topeka currently are blowing on the subject.

City commissioners at their meeting tonight will receive a briefing on efforts to purchase the 467-acre plant east of Lawrence that has been environmentally damaged by decades of fertilizer contamination.

Commissioners will be told that regulators with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment have balked at the city’s previous idea of purchasing the property while not assuming any of the legal liability for the environmental cleanup.

“It looks like it would require a shift in the city’s thinking,” City Commissioner Rob Chestnut said after meeting with KDHE Secretary Rod Bremby and others last week.

In July, city commissioners signed off on a bid for the site that would have required the existing bankruptcy trust that oversees the property to continue being legally responsible for the environmental cleanup. Under that plan, commissioners were confident the city would be protected from a costly environmental cleanup that could result from finding unexpected contaminants on the property.

There could be reason to worry about that again.

“Before we do anything, I really want to know what we would be buying into,” City Commissioner Mike Amyx said. “If you’re not careful, you could be digging yourself into a hole that would be very difficult to get out of.”

City Manager David Corliss, though, said he’s still holding out hope that discussions with KDHE could produce a compromise position — preferably something that would not hold the city responsible for the discovery of any unexpected contaminants on the property. Corliss said he can’t recommend the city take on any unknown environmental liabilities.

“I don’t think it is wise to jump out of the plane and sew the parachute on the way down,” Corliss said.

Some county leaders, though, are hoping that city commissioners don’t further slow the process down. County Commissioner Charles Jones said he’s disappointed that the city hasn’t done more to gain the necessary confidence about the environmental condition of the property. The process already has been a multiyear one.

Jones, who is the former director of environment for KDHE, said he thinks the community can handle the cleanup of the site, which is mainly contaminated with nitrogen that has seeped into the groundwater.

“I think some people have whipped up this superfund mentality about this site,” Jones said. “It really is very manageable and is being managed right now.”

Currently, the bankruptcy trust is pumping nitrogen contaminated water from the site and transporting it via pipeline to North Lawrence where it is used as a fertilizer on farm fields. But that process — or something similar — may have to continue for up to 30 years, according to the KDHE analysis. That long time frame is one reason why KDHE thinks the city, not the trust, should be responsible for the cleanup.

Jones thinks the risks of finding a more dangerous contaminant that would be more expensive to clean up is remote. But, he said if one were found, government likely would be the entity that has to clean it up. He said he would rather get on with that process sooner than later.

“You can avoid making a decision, but that is not going to solve the problem,” Jones said. “And the problem is two-fold. We have this terrible liability on a gateway to our community, and we need to add industrial space to our community.”

The city and the county previously had been working together to purchase the property from the bankruptcy trust. But in 2006, county commissioners turned the process over to city commissioners at their request.

Jones said he now wants the county to become more involved, and wants to hear from the city what the county needs to do to help move the project forward.

Chestnut said he thinks the city and county ought to have that discussion, too.