05/11/2006

Locals, groups join in lawsuit

By Bill O'Brien

bobrien@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Neighbors and a local environmental group can join the state's lawsuit over pollution problems at Williamsburg Receiving and Storage, a Lansing judge ruled.

Ingham County Circuit Judge Paula Manderfield on Wednesday ruled in favor of a request from the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council and several neighbors to join the state's lawsuit against WRS, and moved case jurisdiction to circuit court in Grand Traverse County.

"(The court) ruled that under the Environmental Protection Act these people have a right to be involved in conduct that's polluting their environment," said Traverse City attorney Chris Bzdok, who represented NMEAC and several people who live around the fruit processing plant in Whitewater Township.

The state attorney general's office and WRS representatives had hammered out a proposed 33-page consent judgement to resolve ongoing violations.

The agreement, in response a lawsuit filed in February by the state Department of Environmental Quality, included $150,000 in fines and a cleanup plan for remnants of an estimated million-gallon spill of industrial wastewater in November from a storage lagoon at the plant north of M-72 in Grand Traverse County's Whitewater Township.

Bzdok said the court's ruling will allow NMEAC and WRS neighbors to be part of additional negotiations on the consent judgement. Environmentalists described the state's consent deal with WRS as "woefully inadequate" and provided little relief for neighbors confronted with odors and other environmental problems.

"It seems to us it's just a lot of bureaucratic process without a lot of talk about what they're doing about the pollution out there," NMEAC chairman Ken Smith said.

Rusty Hills, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office, did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Smith didn't take issue with the $150,000 fine proposed by the state.

"Personally, I'm not interested in punishing the company for the past," he said. "My sense is that it's not a deep pockets company ... I don't want to see (it) driven into the dirt."

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