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Planned expansion of lead battery plant will add 125 jobs

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By MICHAEL SASSO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 12, 2009

TAMPA - Tampa community leaders hope a new processing plant for lead acid batteries can help revitalize a poor East Tampa neighborhood, create jobs and clean up a contaminated property.

However, with at least the potential for lead to escape the plant through the air or stormwater runoff – even though local leaders consider that unlikely – Gopher Resource Corp. of Eagan, Minn., has been planning the project's construction and environmental safeguards for three years.

It's also hired a public relations and advertising firm to help present it to the public and local government. For now, governmental leaders and environmental agencies are lining up in support.

"They're committed to hiring people within our area, and that's very important to us," said Ed Johnson, who oversees Tampa's efforts to revitalize East Tampa. "We think it's a win-win."

Gopher Resource's Florida subsidiary, EnviroFocus Technologies, operates a small car battery recycling plant at 1901 N. 66th St. in Tampa, which is just south of Broadway Avenue. There, the company crushes batteries, smelts the lead-bearing materials in a furnace and turns them into 4,000-pound lead blocks.

EnviroFocus is planning to expand fourfold. With a new plant, it could process 10 million used auto batteries a year, producing up to 130,000 tons of lead. Currently, it can produce up to 30,000 tons, said Gopher Resource Chief Operating Officer John Tapper.

Local economic developers are eyeing the additional 125 jobs EnviroFocus is expected to create, and the company has committed to giving East Tampa residents some preference, Johnson said. The plant employs 90 people, and that would rise to 215 after it has expanded.

The expansion project worth more than $117 million, the company said. So far, EnviroFocus has lined up most of its permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection, but is still waiting for an industrial wastewater permit. It hopes to break ground within 45 days and be finished with the expansion by fall 2011, Tapper said.

A plant that handles lead acid batteries might sound like an environmental risk, but state and local environmental agencies actually hope the plant helps clean up the area. Under previous owners, the battery plant that EnviroFocus purchased in 2006 had a history of environmental glitches.

In the mid-1990s, environmental regulators targeted the company that formerly operated the facility, Gulf Coast Recycling, because high levels of lead were found in the air in surrounding neighborhoods. In 1999, neighbors fretted over high levels of lead found in neighborhood soil.

Tapper, the EnviroFocus executive, said his company has already spent $3 million to clean up the area, even though it didn't own the property when it was contaminated. With its massive expansion, EnviroFocus is proposing an intricate system to capture stormwater runoff and prevent it from escaping into the nearby neighborhoods.

In its home state of Minnesota, parent company Gopher Resource Corp. operates a battery recycling plant outside of Minneapolis. For now, the battery plant technically is out of compliance with the federal government's new standards on lead pollution. However, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency downplayed concerns, because the federal lead standards have gotten 10 times stricter recently.

Gopher Resource's plant had met air quality standards before the new regulations were enacted, and its lead emissions have been decreasing in recent years, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said.

In Tampa, EnviroFocus Technologies has committed nine environmental violations since March 2008, according to records provided by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The state fined EnviroFocus more than $11,000 in March 2008 when pollution monitors detected too much lead in the air. Tapper said some construction the company was doing triggered the monitor.

Jerry Campbell, who oversees the air quality division of Hillsborough County's Environmental Protection Commission, said he's not surprised the company has some environmental violations, given the age of the facility it purchased in 2006. His agency is encouraged that it plans to replace its decades-old equipment with newer equipment.

"They are turning an antiquated facility that probably wouldn't be economically viable any more, and instead this company is investing more than $100 million back into it," Campbell said.

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at (813) 259-7865.

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