06:59 PM PDT on Thursday, May 25, 2006

By PAUL AKER / KING 5 News

TACOMA – A former Tacoma City Council member has been accused of failing to disclose information about soil contamination on a tract of land he wants to develop.

The allegations are coming from a group of condominium owners who live adjacent to property former City Council member Paul Miller would like to build homes on.

The land, about 47 acres of woodland sloping into the Tacoma Narrows is, is one of many properties contaminated by years of operation by an Asarco smelting plant.

According to the condo owners, who are already involved in a separate court battle with Miller, the soil on the property contains high levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic, 40 times the allowable limits in some cases, information it discovered only after it subpoenaed documents that show Miller knew about the contamination.

Now they accuse Miller of failing to disclose the contamination on a city environmental checklist to be completed in order to develop the property.

The condo owners now say that development would just create more contaminations problems.

"You disturb that land by cutting trees. Once you do that, you have a run off of that toxic soup," said Ron Richardson, of the Gold Creek Umbrella Association.

"Mr. Miller did not disclose this contamination to the city and instead let the city rely on what Mr. Miller and his team knew was a false representation," Richardson said.

The group is being represented by attorney Bob Casey.

"I was shocked, frankly. I did not think anyone who had been in Mr. Miller's position, at least as a city councilman would have withheld this type of information," Casey said.

After the group notified the city, Tacoma officials took the highly unusual step of sending a letter repealing miller's green light to build.

Miller says the whole controversy is a smoke screen stirred up by the group trying to help its court case. Miller insists he did the right thing by notifying the Department of Ecology.

Tacoma Land Use Supervisor Tom Dolan said the Department of Ecology should have informed him about the contamination, but somehow didn't. However, Dolan said miller should have also disclosed the situation to the city but simply goofed.

The Department of Ecology now says it should have done more about this earlier. It plans an investigation to find out why it didn't tell the city to put the brakes on.

Miller said he believes the city should have been on notice because he told people in a city meeting he was looking into possible contamination.