INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Northern Indiana residents who sued a
wood-recycling plant, alleging that its dust and other emissions
threatens their health and keeps them indoors, are awaiting a federal
judge’s approval of a settlement calling for the Elkhart plant’s
operators to clean up and shutter the site within five years.
The
proposed settlement of the class-action suit also calls for Soil
Solutions Co. to obtain a restrictive covenant barring similar
operations from using the site after it’s closed.
Environmental
attorney Kim Ferraro sued VIM Recycling on behalf of local residents in
2009, two years before the plant was sold to Soil Solutions.
A
federal judge dismissed that suit in 2010, but the 7th Circuit Court of
Appeals in Chicago overturned that ruling in 2011, clearing the way for
the suit to proceed against the plant, which grinds scrap wood into
animal bedding and mulch.
The case obtained class-action status
last year. Ferraro said the 1,800 residents who joined the suit are
looking forward to a June 16 hearing where a federal judge in Hammond,
who gave his preliminary approval in March to the settlement, will
consider giving it his final approval.
She said the deal means the plant’s neighbors won’t have to wait through more years of litigation and an
uncertain outcome.
"What
they’ve wanted all along is for that place to be closed down and
cleaned up, and this provides the clarity and the end in sight for that
to happen," Ferraro said. "They’ll finally be able to get their lives
back and live in their homes comfortably and use their yards. That’s
really the point of this — to put that community back the way it was."
Ferraro,
who’s the Hoosier Environmental Council’s staff attorney, said the
plaintiffs will continue to seek monetary damages against the plant’s
former operator, VIM Recycling.
Soil Solutions has disavowed the actions of VIM Recycling, which owned the plant between 2000 and 2011.

Ed
Sullivan, an attorney who represents Soil Solutions in the lawsuit,
said the company will only shutter its Elkhart location under the
settlement.
Once the deal is approved, he said Soil Solutions will
assess how much material remains at the site and needs to be removed
over the next five years.
"This arrangement gives the homeowners
what they want, and it gives time for the company to work its way out of
that location in a way that won’t disrupt their business too greatly,"
Sullivan said.
Ferraro said a January survey at the plant site found about 300,000 cubic yards of wood wastes.
Wayne
Stutsman, a retired industrial electrician who lives near the plant,
said he and other neighbors who’ve endured the dust and emissions
produced by its operations are delighted by the tentative settlement.
"We’re thankful that we have a judge who’s looking at this case and has said, ‘Enough is
enough,’" he said.
Stutsman,
69, said that since shortly after the plant opened at the site in 2000,
it began producing a large amount of dust and persistent smells that
have made life difficult for its neighbors.
He and his wife,
Barbara, have lived in their home 41 years. But Stutsman said the site
sometimes releases so much dust that winds carry that material onto his
neighborhood almost like snow falling in winter, coating everything and
creating breathing problems for residents.
"It’s just unbelievable
the number of people you hear coughing and sneezing when they’re
outside during the night or the day," he said.
Ferraro said she’s
disappointed that local and state government didn’t act aggressively
against the plant despite its impact on so many nearby residents.
She
said the Indiana Department of Environmental Management had documented
that the plant committed multiple violations of Indiana’s open dumping
and solid waste laws, but the agency "didn’t really do enforcement or
impose meaningful fines."
IDEM spokeswoman Amy Smith said the
department had "worked to the fullest extent of its authority to resolve
violations" its staff found at the plant involving its air permit.
She said IDEM had imposed civil penalties in excess of $85,000 against the plant over the years.
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