In this short dialogue, Speaker B recounts discovering a sinkhole at a property that was previously used as a used‑car/junkyard, highlighting the resulting geotechnical problems and the lingering soil contamination from oil and gasoline. The conversation underscores how such hidden environmental liabilities can dramatically increase project costs, with references to a $10 million remediation figure and the difficulty of fully cleaning contaminated soil. Speaker A asks whether a project on contaminated land must involve complete excavation and replacement of the soil, prompting discussion of remediation strategies and the financial burden they impose.
Are you in the deal room?
Mentioned a sinkhole, which we discovered because remember I told you the building cracked in half and was going into a hole, right? And so that's a sinkhole. And so it has geotechnical issues and it was a used car— like we asked what they used it for before. Oh, it just had these cool little buildings. They never once said that it was a dirty junkyard that used to have cars there and dripping oil and gas all over the ground because it was a junkyard. Those things never get clean, ever. You spend $10 million, they're going to come back out and say you still got contaminated soil.
So when you have to— if you choose to continue with a project where the soil is contaminated, do you have to excavate it all and get rid of the soil and put new ones?
Or what they do— and I had two dirty gas stations in Florida that did this to me— they made me do what was called soil remediation, where they put, put a bunch of pipes in the ground and they run detergent down that clings on to the contaminated soil and pulls out the contaminations according to them. And it takes 74 years to do it. I'm like, well, so the guy that puts it in the ground, how the hell does that guy know to tell his great-grandson to go out and check the dirt and see if it's still good or not? But that was a $22 million mistake on my end in 2007, right? I bought that piece of shit in 2009. I was $22 million broke because of dirty soil. You think I want to get into that again? That's why I was acting the way I did yesterday. Play the clip.
