Full-Court Cleanup

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Plain old dirt and fill proved to be the biggest headache. For 100 years, the area was a dumping ground for ash and cinder containing cancer-causing substances called PAHs, or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (think of the charred stuff left on your barbecue grill). In all, Victory developers moved 750,000 cu. yds. of dirt, with nearly half so hopelessly "dirty" that it was carted away in 15,000 huge truckloads. Because previous landowners like Union Pacific were paying some of the cleanup costs, accountants had to track each spadeful.

The Dallas arena stands on land used since the early 1900s for power-plant cooling ponds, a relatively harmless problem compared with the arena's parking lot, built where fuel storage tanks once leaked cancer-causing benzene into groundwater. (In all, 15 million gal. of tainted groundwater had to be cleaned.) The office tower and apartment complex being developed by Perot's partner, Southwest Sports Group chief Tom Hicks, will rise over what was once the railroad maintenance yard. The cleanup team there found what they sarcastically called a "glory hole" of petroleum contamination, requiring excavations 30 ft. down.

Forty-seven states, not content to wait for congressional action on brownfield, already have voluntary cleanup programs. "There's a realization that if you remove the dangerous elements, you don't have to return these sites to God's green earth," says Mark Johnson, editor of the Chicago-based Brownfield News. "It's far better to have a degree of cleanup than no cleanup at all."