What is the contamination at General Electric building?

To the editor:

There was an article in the paper on Thursday, Dec. 20 about the former GE building, and one of the concerns mentioned in the article was some sort of "contamination" under the building.

These two comments in the article struck me especially:

1. Linton mayor Tom "Jones explained that General Electric officials have told him they will only allow heavy manufacturing or some kind of green manufacturing because of the contamination that is present under the building."

2. "We've been working on this thing (the GE building) for four years. We got there just over a year ago. They (GE) were going to give the building to the city, but they had to pull back because of that contamination under the building. In other words, they didn't want to dump this on anybody, Jones said."

The reason they struck me was the "contamination" was never identified. I suppose I could call the number mentioned at the end of the article for the mayor for anyone having questions or concerns, but I feel that this information is something that needs to be publicized through the media rather than given out one person at a time over the phone.

Perhaps I am among the few rather than the many, but just what exactly is the contamination under the former GE building? Thanks in advance.

Craig A. Koch

Linton