As the City of Ithaca fights potential cleanup costs for coal tar pollution on its Third Street property, the towns of Ithaca and Dryden also face the possibility of being pulled into the expensive lawsuits.

The Ithaca Wastewater Treatment Plant is jointly owned by the City of Ithaca and the towns of Ithaca and Dryden. The three municipalities went in together on the joint sewage plant, between Aldi's and the Farmers Market on Third Street, in the 1980s.

The city was recently named as a third-party defendant in a lawsuit brought by FirstEnergy, an Ohio-based corporation that New York State Electric and Gas Corp. contends should be paying some of its cleanup costs because it's a corporate successor to a company that made coal tar on the site. NYSEG plans next year to undertake an investigation and cleanup of carcinogenic coal tar left by its predecessor when the sewage plant land was formerly used as a coal-gas plant. NYSEG sued FirstEnergy in 2003. In response, FirstEnergy last month sued the city and several other current property owners of former manufactured coal gas plants.

The Ithaca City School District was also named in the suit, making school district taxpayers potentially responsible for some cleanup costs at the Court Street coal tar cleanup near Markles Flats.

The sewage plant is owned roughly 55 percent by the City of Ithaca, 43 percent by the Town of Ithaca, and 2 percent by the Town of Dryden.

FirstEnergy's lawsuit only names the city, but the company could legally expand its suit to include the towns because they're joint operators of the plant, according to City Attorney Dan Hoffman and Ithaca Town Supervisor Herb Engman.

A legal oversight when the three municipalities built their plant in the 1980s means the city is currently the sole owner of the land around the plant.

That issue created headaches last year when the city and town of Ithaca couldn't agree on how much land should be transferred to joint ownership. The municipalities announced in July that they'd come to a negotiated settlement that would transfer the land inside the sewage plant fence -- including land impacted by NYSEG's proposed cleanup.

That agreement has been approved by all three municipal boards but has not yet been finalized, according to Hoffman and Engman.

Engman said Monday that FirstEnergy's lawsuit doesn't impact his desire to have the land transferred to joint ownership because the towns may be held liable anyway as joint operators, if not owners.

"What the law says is if you're an operator of the property, you have liability as much as if you owned the land underneath it," he said.

However, Engman emphasized that the towns have not been named as liable parties in any lawsuit.

Hoffman concurred that the towns have not been named, but said members of the Special Joint Committee have been discussing whether the other municipalities should help pay for the outside legal counsel that will be needed to defend the sewage plant and the city against FirstEnergy's lawsuit.

"It's got to be figured out if the city is going to take care of this completely on their own or if there's going to be some shared effort," Hoffman said.

"We're late to the game," Engman responded. "The city owned this land beginning in 1959. The partnership didn't come into being until 1981. The coal tar wasn't discovered until 1983. And the sewage treatment plant didn't go into operation until 1987. So when you look at all that you have to say, 'Well wait a minute, when does our liability start?'"

The contamination occurred when a coal gas plant operated at the site from 1925 to 1932, Engman said.

Town of Dryden Supervisor Mary Ann Sumner she's "still in a wait-and-see position" regarding the FirstEnergy lawsuit.

"I don't know the terms of agreement between NYSEG and FirstEnergy, but we will do what we need to in order to protect taxpayers in our sewer districts from sharing any cleanup costs, as well as from potential exorbitant legal fees," Sumner said by e-mail.

The city has to file an answer to FirstEnergy's lawsuit by Dec. 1, Hoffman said, but the case itself "could drag on for a long time."