All,

You can go to the Old Carco Liquidation Trust (f/k/a Chrysler LLC) Docket using the following link:
http://dm.epiq11.com/CHR/Docket#Debtors=...

Once here search for Docket number 8015. This is the settlement between the Trust and the various governmental entities. The key pieces to see in here that may provide some comfort to those of you worried about environmental abandonment on the city are:
1. "Main Document" (page 5, line 5) references the $10 million the City will receive for environmental clean up from the Trust post abandonment
2. "Document 6 of 6" is a workplan for work funded by the trust to upgrade the current remediation and monitoring systems on site.

Additionally all the docket items relating to the Chrysler BK can be found here.

If you read my first comment, multi-named illdrinktothat, you'd know that my "solution" to cynicaleye's comment said what janesvillean said, only with fewer words.

Hmmm, I wonder who else you are. Settle down and go post something under one of your other usernames.

And your snarky solution is what gazettefan?

Wow.

All you left out is: If any of you get to Kenosha, be sure to ride the streetcars in Harbor Park. Lotsa fun.

OK, recall how GM was split up during the bankruptcy into "New GM" and "Old GM" aka Motors Liquidation Company. Fortunately (?) for Janesville, our plant was NOT liquidated and remains the property of New GM, as its only remaining standby plant.
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Kenosha Engine, on the other hand, ended up on the liquidation side, which for Chrysler is called Old Carco (talking about this always feels like a first-year economics example, e.g. "Widget Manufacturing, Inc.", heh.) This company basically has no assets except the property, and what is likely to happen is that the property will be turned over to the city in lieu of cleanup payment. If you want an analogy this is much like what happens when a property is in tax foreclosure. Theoretically the city then has options including selling it wholesale to a developer or creating some sort of redevelopment piece by piece, say a retail district here and residential there. Kenosha alredy did this with the previously vacated AMC Lakefront assembly plant, which is now the Harbor Park redevelopment.
http://dailyreporter.com/2010/04/30/keno...
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Holding the polluter liable is a wonderful and desirable concept, but in practice many, many businesses close when they run out of money and have no real assets to pay for it. This is the problem with the mulch fire in Rock Twp, this is the problem with toxic sites like Blackhawk Plating, potentially with Robinson's Cleaners, and so on. Even if there's a legal case to be made (there isn't much that can be done with Chrysler, as the bankruptcy has been through court and discharged, with the "new" Chrysler really a new company), it's simply expedient for the taxpayers to underwrite the cleanup so that developers can feel legally safe doing something with the site.
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This underscores once again why it's important to hold businesses to strict standards WHILE they are in operation, because as it stands they have a number of great incentives to find a way to skip town on the mess. Better to prevent them from creating one in the first place. Obviously there are a number of entities who would just as soon throw all our environmental laws out the window because a company shows up and promises to create a handful of low-paying jobs. We should resist that, because of end results like this.

We should try not to be so cynical. This could never happen in Janesville, we hold such businesses liable, don't we?

janesvillean?

The story seems to indicate that the city of Kenosha doesn't have to pay to acquire ownership of the land. That situation tends to leave the clean-up to the government. Now it's a question of: is that a good trade-off?

Why isn't Chrysler responsible for clean up of the site. They are the ones that used it and probably are leaving behind a toxic waste site. Yet another example of how corporations rule and the tax payers get stuck!