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GM's Toxic Assets

Published: 02 Jul 2009 22:44:22 PST

In the market for a parking lot in Flint, Michigan? Or a nine-hole golf course in New Jersey (needs TLC)? How about some scenic acreage way upstate New York that features prominently on New York State Registry of Hazardous Waste Sites and on the federal superfund list of contaminated places? All—and more—available now to the highest bidder. Come on down!

While the supposedly best of GM is sold to the supposedly new GM, the worst will be auctioned off in bankruptcy court. Call it the Adam and Eve of all foreclosure sales.

Open house in Massena, New York. This fine waterfront property, abutting the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation in the east and the St. Lawrence River to the north, was home to a GM foundry. It made aluminum cylinder heads for the Chevrolet Corvair. It also mass-produced PCB sludge.

The proud buyer will become quite familiar with John Privitera, a lawyer for the Mohawk tribe at the McNamee Lochner Titus&Williams PC law firm in Albany, New York. On information and belief, John Privitera Esq. alleges that GM was “dumping hazardous waste on the banks of the river, such that the waste oozed into the water and the land. It was picked up by animals and moved up the food chain through fish and into Mohawk women — into their breast milk, into their babies.”

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