Ken Koeppler figured he’d be retired by now. With a medical resume that includes two heart attacks, the 65-year-old musician and recording engineer has painstakingly amassed a modest portfolio that includes three rental properties and a retirement account that belonged to his late wife.

But after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources discovered contaminated soil underneath one of those properties — left over from its former incarnation as a dry cleaning business — retirement now looks like a pipe dream. The DNR’s demands that he test, engineer and remediate the site have already cost him tens of thousands of dollars, and he expects those costs to balloon into six digits in the coming months.

He’s spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours researching the problem, contacting engineers, state and federal representatives, lawyers, DNR regulators and owners of other contaminated sites.

“I’ve got a new full-time job,” he said without a hint of humor.

It was in March of 2015 that Koeppler got a letter telling him that the DNR was investigating former dry cleaning sites for hazardous “vapors intrusion” from chemicals used in the industry. The agency asked for his cooperation in gathering soil samples from beneath his property, located on Russell Street near Schenk’s Corners, and sampling the air inside.

He signed a consent form and mailed it in, and his life hasn’t been the same since.

The DNR sent a crew to bore holes through the concrete slab under the building, where Koeppler had lived for 17 years until buying another residence nearby and renting out his old home. An analysis of the soil turned up contamination, and further testing revealed unsafe levels of hazardous vapor in the home.

Then the agency told Koeppler he needed to hire an engineer to take care of the problem.

He did, and as a result he installed two air pumps to channel the air away from the building, at a cost of $3,500. He had hoped that eventually the chemicals would dissipate, taking care of the problem.

Then the DNR informed him that the groundwater was at risk. Now he’s installing three monitoring wells, at a cost of $13,000. Add $600 a year for the city easement for the wells, nearly $1,000 a year for the insurance the city required him to purchase, nearly $10,000 for commissioning investigation plans, work plans and other engineering and testing costs, more than $3,000 in lawyer fees, as well as a few other miscellaneous costs, and he’s spent more than $30,000 to date.

And that could be just the start.

A recent letter from Robert Langdon, a hydrologist with SCS Engineers, the firm Koeppler hired, warned of crippling expenses if the DNR determines that Koepler’s efforts haven’t been enough.

If the agency demands more groundwater sampling, he can expect to cough up another $25,000. If those tests show that nearby residences need vapor testing and mitigation measures, that’s another $5,000 per home.

“If we assume all of the above are required, but no soil excavation, capping or other remedial actions are necessary,” reads the Sept. 29 letter, “that might put you $100,000 of additional work.”

In addition, chemicals that had traveled underground were responsible for elevated vapor readings in an uninhabited storage shed next door, a property that’s currently on the market. And Koeppler fears that if the new neighbors make an issue of it he could be on the hook for more remediation costs.

He’s contacted his state representatives, who have counseled him to contact his federal representatives, all to no avail. He’s contacted the children of the now-deceased Lars and Norma Hanson, who had run Vogue Cleaners on the Russell Street property from 1960 to 1978, hoping to find out if the couple had insurance that might cover the cost of the cleanup.

“Their children didn’t want to speak to me,” he said. “They just wanted to get off the phone.”

He’s explored federal and state funds that have either dried up or for which he is not eligible. He’s applied for financial help from the DNR — no dice.

To resist is not an option. The DNR has made it clear that any non-compliance could be met with an “enforcement action,” resulting in possibly tens of thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees.

It’s an ironic predicament: a Republican-run state that has jettisoned regulatory rules for mining interests, shoreline homeowners and agricultural operations forcing a property owner to pay a small fortune to clean up contamination caused by others, even while the DNR has authorized vast sums to help dry cleaners clean up their own contaminated properties.

After nearly two years of fighting the system and watching his retirement plans go up in smoke, the gray-haired musician cut a forlorn figure as he paced the kitchen of his Atwood Street residence, his hunched shoulders appearing to bow with the weight of it all. With a cracked voice, he issued an impotent plea:

“When is somebody going to get an idea of what this is doing to me?”

The chemical at the root of Koeppler’s woes is perchloroethylene, often called "perc." It’s the most common solvent used by dry cleaners, and exposure among dry cleaning employees has been known to cause dizziness, mild memory loss, vision problems, slow reaction times and redness and blistering of the skin.

Since it’s located in the ground underneath the residence, concentrations of perc at Koeppler’s rental property aren’t likely to reach levels high enough to cause those types of maladies.

But because it’s a very volatile organic solvent, perc emits a vapor that moves through groundwater and soil, finding its way into structures in a process known as “vapor migration.” And long-term exposure to those vapors heightens the lifetime risk for certain cancers, including bladder cancer, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

With the air pumps, the perc concentration has been kept below the safe level of 6.2 parts-per-billion level. It previously had been at 33 parts per billion.

Koeppler has kept his tenants up to date on the developments. In fact, he said, they “actually knew something was up before I did. The DNR went knocking on doors in the neighborhood asking permission to drill through the slabs for gas samples and to take indoor air samples.”

They have remained at the property despite the situation.

Nick Barnes, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student who has lived there off and on since 2011, said he isn’t worried.

“Overall, I am unconcerned about the health risks posed after looking at the research on the levels of the contaminants deemed safe and seeing the results of the tests,” he said in an email.

Another tenant family, a young couple with a small daughter, had previously lived there for nine months.

“I lived there for 17 years,” Koeppler said. “If anybody suffered any ill effects from it, it would be me.”

But Koeppler is finding little sympathy at the DNR.

Koeppler’s lawyer, Paul Kent, informed Koeppler late last year that the DNR official overseeing remediation of his property had become “more aggressive about moving forward than he had been in the past.”

In the Nov. 12, 2015, letter, Kent said Mike Schmoller, a DNR spill coordinator, told him that if Koeppler didn’t act promptly, “they would do so and seek recovery costs from you. He also indicated that they were seriously considering an enforcement action.”

He characterized the conversation with Schmoller as “rather unpleasant.”

Kent informed Koeppler of his options, which included seeking state grants or loans, which were ultimately found to be unavailable, applying for financial aid from the DNR because of his financial situation, exploring whether the insurance carried by the dry cleaner could be found liable — Koeppler couldn’t locate the insurer — declaring bankruptcy, or doing nothing and fighting the DNR.

The latter course, he said, could result in liens on his assets and thousands of dollars in penalties.

His advice: Inform the DNR that because his “assets are modest,” he needed time to explore potential funding alternatives, but that ultimately he needed to do what the DNR told him to do.

“That’s why I guess it’s buyer beware,” said Linda Hanefeld, supervisor of the DNR’s south central Wisconsin region remediation and redevelopment team.

“We still see people buying and selling properties without doing their due diligence,” she said.

But Koeppler maintained that he had no way of knowing about the contamination.

Koeppler said the couple that owned the dry cleaning operation sold the property in 1979 to an engineer who converted the building to a residence and then sold it. Koeppler, unaware of the environmental issues, bought the property in 1987, five years before the state adopted a law requiring the disclosure of environmental hazards to property buyers.

“I bought that property in this little donut hole of time when they didn’t have to tell me anything about it,” he said.

Koeppler said he never had any inkling of the problem until regulators informed him of it in March of 2015. A few weeks later it sunk in that cleaning up the site was his responsibility.

“Since Mr. Koeppler owns the property, according to state statute, he is responsible for the cleanup of that property,” said DNR spokesman James Dick in an email.

That statute reads: “A person who possesses or controls a hazardous substance which is discharged or who causes the discharge of a hazardous substance shall take the actions necessary to restore the environment to the extent practicable and minimize the harmful effects from the discharge to the air, lands or waters of this state.”

The court cases cited by regulators include Wisconsin vs. Chrysler Outboard Corp., which operated a manufacturing plant in Hartford between 1965 to 1984. In the early 1970s, the corporation hauled several 55-gallon drums of toxic chemicals to a landfill, where they eventually leaked, producing a plume of groundwater contamination at least a half-mile long.

Discovered by the DNR in 1992, the chlorinated solvents in the drums were over 10 times the safe drinking water standard. The state Supreme Court found Chrysler on the wrong side of state law.

And in a 1985 state Supreme Court case, the court sided with the state against N.W. Mauthe Company in Appleton, which was contaminated with chemicals from a chrome electroplating operation. The court ruled that Mauthe was responsible for the cleanup.

State Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, who counts Koeppler among her constituents, called his predicament “horrible,” but she concedes that state law is working against him.

“It really stinks for him, the way the law is,” she said. “There’s no remedy for him.”

“This is a person who the DNR should be helping,” Taylor said. “Not giving high-capacity well permits that are about giving our public waters away for free. This is a perfect example of an inequity that the DNR has shown little interest in addressing.”

State law left Koeppler in the cold on another front.

Since 1997, the DNR has administered a Dry Cleaner Environmental Response Fund, funded through license fees for dry cleaners and fees on the sale of dry cleaning solvents.

In the past, the state has shelled out millions from the fund to help dry cleaners investigate and remediate contamination. For instance, Klinke Cleaners stores have received more than $269,000 in reimbursement costs from the fund. Paul’s Classic Cleaners in Monona has been reimbursed for $500,000 in cleanup costs, the maximum amount allowed under the program.

But because of funding shortfalls, since 2008 that program has been closed to new applicants.

Regardless, Koeppler wouldn’t qualify anyway. The fund was specifically created to benefit dry cleaners. There’s no similar fund for people who inherit a dry cleaner’s contaminated properties.

Koeppler looked at getting help from the federal Superfund, which pays for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. (The fund eventually bailed out the Mauthe Company in Appleton.) But that program is aimed at abandoned industrial sites that pose a health risk to the public.

Koeppler sought financial help by submitting an “ability to pay” form with the DNR, which required him to provide a detailed accounting of his assets.

“They said, based on the forms, ‘He can pay for it. He has over a million dollars in rental property alone,’ which was patently false,” Koeppler said.

Koeppler is not poor. But he doesn’t have the kind of wealth that allows for a six-figure outlay without a lot of pain.

Over the years he’s accumulated two rental properties in Baraboo, the Russell Street property, 10 acres of rural land with a barn in North Freedom, and his current residence and recording studio on Atwood Avenue. The total value of his properties is about $725,000.

“I owed $110,000 on one, and I had over $20,000 in loans on (the contaminated) property,” he said, describing the information on his ability-to-pay form. “This property was the highest assessed one of any of them, and it’s bleeding me dry.”

He sought a break on his city taxes, arguing that the contamination has all but wiped out the value of the property.

“I said, ‘I can’t give this property away,’” he said.

In his first break since the beginning of the saga, the city agreed last year to lower the property’s assessed value by $35,000.

While Koeppler has left few rocks unturned, there is one lawmaker that Koeppler never contacted: Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who in 2013 launched a “Victims of Government” project to highlight the plights of citizens who have been subjected to the regulatory hammer of “a very large, growing and abusive government.”

Asked for comment on Koeppler’s case, Johnson spokeswoman Paige Alwood issued the following statement:

“Now that Mr. Koeppler’s situation has been brought to the attention of Sen. Johnson’s staff, we are working with him directly to help him understand and navigate the current regulations that may be threatening his financial future.”

But Koeppler said he hasn’t heard from Johnson’s office. And, at any rate, he thinks he probably knows the current regulatory atmosphere surrounding his situation better than Johnson’s staffers do.

“The Victims of Government Project sounds nice but this is still a state of Wisconsin issue,” he said. “Unless it gets kicked up to the EPA it’s not under federal jurisdiction.”

There are several states, among them Texas and Arizona, that have “innocent landowner” laws to protect buyers from liability if their properties are found to be contaminated.

Taylor plans to introduce such a law in Wisconsin, but in a Republican controlled Legislature, any proposal from a Democrat will likely face partisan scrutiny. She hopes she can generate bipartisan interest in the issue.

“This could happen to anybody,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it should be partisan at all. But so many of the things I work on don’t seem like they should be partisan and sometimes they end up being partisan. But I’ll certainly try to get some interest on the other side.”

How many people it would help is uncertain. Koeppler’s predicament appears to be unusual. A list of 407 sites listed on the DNR’s database that are contaminated with perc shows that the vast majority of owners are businesses that contaminated the sites or commercial interests that bought them. Koeppler stands out as a small-scale property owner who has to uncork his personal resources to pay for the remediation.

But there could be more. In the DNR’s original letter to Koeppler, the agency said it was in the process of reviewing other former dry cleaning properties, which number about 200 in Madison.

“You probably have a lot of residents who are on those sites and people just don’t know that they’re contaminated,” Taylor said.

Relief can’t come soon enough for Koeppler, who has struck out at every attempt to get out from under a pile of bills from the government. But he’s trying to stay optimistic.

“Hopefully, if the monitoring wells bring good news, I can start on whatever the process is for closure,” he said. “Which is still thousands of bucks in more fees.”

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