By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Officials with Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust says cleanup at the former General Motors site won’t finish until next year.

“We do expect cleanup will be complete by 2017,” Patricia Spitzley of the RACER trust told the Town Council on Wednesday.

The trust was formed by a federal court after GM went bankrupt. They turned all their properties over to the court, bought back the ones they wanted using federal bailout money and RACER took over the leftovers, including Massena.

Spitzley said they are marketing the property in anticipation of the work wrapping up.

“We’ve had a number of entities look at the property. We have confidentiality agreements, so I will not go into who they are,” Spitzley said. She did say it included agriculture and manufacturing companies.

She said they have a process to screen potential buyers that includes six criteria.

As outlined in the court settlement, they have to get best price, with a high number of jobs created, look whether or not entity will interfere or increase environmental cost, look at other benefits entity will bring to community, reputation of buyer, needs and wishes of community and the feasibility of project.

“We only have one chance to get this right,” Spitzley said. “We don’t do fire sales.”

She said RACER considers it “prime property” because of the existing railspike and proximity to the Canadian border, but still have problems to tackle.

“the lack of potable water at the site is a challenge to redevelopment. The wastewater facility could not be saved,” Spitzley said.

She said that’s one of many areas RACER is working with the town and village of Massena, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe and economic development bodies including the county Industrial Development Agency and the statewide Empire State Development.

The site includes 200 acres that can be developed on the north side of state Route 37 and 37 on the south.

She said it’s a possibility that a Canadian company could buy the property and set up shop.

“We’ve done a lot of marketing the property up in Canada … and internationally,” she said. “Good opportunity for a Canadian firm looking to have a presence in the United States.”

Part of the cleanup involves removing levels of contamination far beyond what the Environmental Protection Agency anticipated. The automaker left behind deep underground pits of pure polychlorinated biphenyl, which is a carcinogen.

Anna Kelly of the EPA announced in early 2014 that there were levels of PCB 250 percent higher than they believed.

Part of RACER’s job will be to monitor the site for 100 years, Kelly said at the time.