The Local Area Watch

TOXIC TOWERS

157,000 POUNDS OF HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES MISSING
MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL OPENS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
DEVELOPERS REFUSE TO SAY WHERE TOXIC WASTE WENT

The celebrated redevelopment of the ancient Berkey & Gay furniture factory into the Boardwalk office and apartment complex located at 940 Monroe Avenue N.W. on the northern edge of downtown Grand Rapids, jokingly referred to as “Toxic Towers” by some of its residents and workers, is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). A century’s accumulation of hazardous industrial waste, including toxic levels of arsenic, mercury, and lead, that had poisoned the soil and groundwater below the old furniture factory is missing, and state investigators want to know where the Boardwalk developers put it.

The Boardwalk developers, a secret group of investors fronted by local contractor Thomas E. Beckering, have denied in various statements to MDEQ officials that they removed any of the hazardous waste known, according to public records, to contaminate the site of the Boardwalk before construction began. However, both the MDEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have in evidence several hundred hours of videotape footage showing the lead contractors for the developers, Pioneer Incorporated and Dykema Excavators Inc., hauling away dozens of truckloads of the hazardous waste on daily basis during September, October, and November of 2000.

The developers’ credibility was further undermined by the fact that they had built an entirely new basement level to house Spectrum Health Corporation’s training subsidiary, the Grand Rapids Medical Education & Research Center, and a new five-story parking ramp. Both new features of the Boardwalk commercial-residential complex required contractors for the developers to remove an estimated 28,000 cubic yards of soil to make room for the new construction.

That soil is unaccounted for by the Boardwalk developers in their statements to MDEQ officials. According to publicly recorded findings of the hazardous substances that were known to contaminate the Boardwalk site before construction began, this missing soil is contaminated with 157,000 pounds of heavy metals, petro-chemicals, and volatile organic compounds in concentrations hazardous to human life and health.

As a consequence of the videotape and other evidence, Michigan Assistant Attorney General Thomas Piotrowski directed Thomas Mintner, head of the Grand Rapids MDEQ office to open a criminal investigation in February 2001 to determine what the developers removed from the Boardwalk site and where they dumped it. In May 2001, Michigan Assistant Attorney General Michael Leffler visited one of the suspected dumpsites, the old Grand Rapids water filtration plant, which Michigan State University has been supporting as the future site of a drinking water treatment research center. (See related story, Logie’s Landfill.)

In June 2001, according to the detective Mintner assigned to the investigation, employees of the Boardwalk developers made false statements about removing and dumping the Boardwalk’s hazardous waste at the filtration plant. By October 2001, the MDEQ’s detective had collected eyewitness accounts and other evidence impeaching those statements. By the end of October 2001, Michigan State Senator Kenneth Sikkema (R-Grandville), who had pressed the MDEQ to investigate at the time the dumping of Boardwalk hazardous waste had first been reported in the fall of 2000, wrote a letter to William Tingley, executive director of the Local Area Watch, that the MDEQ’s Office of Criminal Investigations was now actively investigating the charges of illegal dumping of hazardous waste by the Boardwalk developers.

In February 2002, Minter informed the Grand Rapids media that he expected the criminal investigation to be concluded soon. However, in March 2002 the Michigan Attorney General’s office received several dozen pages of documents from the Local Area Watch that linked the illegal dumping of the Boardwalk’s hazardous waste to a bank fraud and corruption by Grand Rapids city officials. (See related stories, Logie’s Landfill and Behind Closed Doors.) The most recent twist occurred on May 10, 2002, when Grand Rapids Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff informed the Local Area Watch’s attorney Peter Steketee that city officials had destroyed critical documents concerning the illegal dumping of Boardwalk waste at the filtration plant after the Local Area Watch had subpoenaed them. (See Behind Closed Doors for full details.)

Neither the Michigan Attorney General’s office nor the MDEQ has had any comment on the status of the Boardwalk hazardous waste investigation in light of these recent developments. Meanwhile, the Boardwalk’s arsenic, lead, and mercury continue to poison the land, water, and air of the hazardous waste dumps the Boardwalk’s developers created in and around Grand Rapids.

Keep checking here as we continue to update this story.

The Guild Once Again Protects Its Own

Today I just received notice that the barkless, toothless, and otherwise worthless Attorney Grievance Commission turned loose another shyster who yours truly caught red-handed helping his law firm double-deal the residents and taxpayers of the City of Grand Rapids.

The AGC has opined that the decidedly estimable Dick Wendt of the law firm Dickinson Wright P.L.L.C. did no wrong in representing the City of Grand Rapids in the negotiation of a taxpayer subsidy for the developers of the Berkey & Gay site while other members of his law firm sat at the other end of the table representing the developers. Little wonder the Berkey & Gay developers bagged 2.5 million taxpayer dollars when their law firm controls both sides of the table, but it is astonishing that the AGC couldn’t figure out that a conflict of interest as blatant as this is unethical.

Even if the keystone cops of the AGC can’t get the simple stuff straight, how come the Mayor, the City Commission, the City Manager, and the City Attorney aren’t protecting the denizens of Grand Rapids from such chicanery? Indeed, how come there is even an opportunity for the law firm Dickinson Wright to take advantage of the taxpayers, when we already have full-time lawyers on the City payroll?

Where’s the City Comptroller whose sole charge is policing taxpayer funds? Why should the taxpayers have to pay for legal services tainted by a conflict of interest? The taxpayers of this City are, at the very least, entitled to a law firm’s loyalty when they buy its services. Clearly the taxpayers did not have Dickinson Wright’s undivided loyalty when they were also representing the developers seeking the subsidy.

But then why should mere professional ethics stop Dickinson Wright from feeding at the taxpayer trough?

OPEN LETTER TO CITY COMMISSION: STOP DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS

May 13, 2002

Grand Rapids City Commission
City Hall, Ninth Floor
300 Monroe Avenue, N.W.
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503

Re: The Local Area Watch v. The City of Grand Rapids, et al.
Case No. 02-00218-CZ

Dear Sirs:

I have received this morning a letter from Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff stating that the City has destroyed and will continue to destroy minutes of City Commission executive session meetings that were explicitly requested in discovery by us in our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. This is, of course, contemptuous of both the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act and of the Court, which is entitled to review those minutes to determine whether they should be disclosed to us.

What is particularly troubling about the City’s destruction of these documents is that Mr. Ophoff was required to produce them for the Court’s review by the end of February. He refused but asked our attorney, Peter Steketee, if we would give the City an extension while he worked on an agreement with other City officials to informally show us these minutes. Assuming that Mr. Ophoff was making this request in good faith, Mr. Steketee agreed. What in fact happened is that Mr. Ophoff put off Mr. Steketee with various excuses for eleven weeks until the City was able to destroy these critical documents.

I doubt that Mr. Ophoff took it upon himself to obstruct our discovery of these documents. Our investigation will no doubt identify who instructed Mr. Ophoff to deceive Mr. Steketee. Meanwhile, Mr. Ophoff has promised that the City will continue destroying documents until we obtain an injunction to stop the City. As that will take time, the City Commission might for once in this matter act in the public interest and safeguard the principle of the Freedom of the Information Act by prohibiting any further destruction of executive session minutes until the Court has had the opportunity to examine them.

Sincerely,

Wm Q. Tingley III
Executive Director

City Attorney Toasts Incriminating Records

This is outrageous. Today Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff told LAW’s attorney Peter Steketee that the City Attorney’s Office has destroyed the public records that LAW has asked the local court to disclose to it and the public under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead of turning these public records over to the court so that a circuit court judge can review them to decide whether to disclose them to the public, Ophoff had them destroyed.

These public records were minutes of closed sessions of the Grand Rapids City Commission held on March 6, 2001, and May 8, 2001, in which Mayor Logie and City Commissioners made decisions to NOT investigate the dumping of hazardous waste at the old Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant located on Monroe Avenue, just north of Leonard Street. Because these decisions were made in secret instead of in an open meeting, where Boss Logie and the Empty Suits would have been accountable to the public and the media, it looked like those closed meetings were conducted in violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

Because I was twice tipped off by Commissar – ahem – I mean, Commissioner Jendrasiak (you know him, the self-proclaimed champion of the workingman who keeps his blue collar neatly tucked beneath his pinstripes) as to what transpired in those closed sessions, last June I, as your executive director, sent Boss Logie a FOIA request for those closed session minutes and other public records concerning the dumping of hazardous waste at the old filtration plant. After jerking me around for several weeks, City Manager Kurt Kimball finally refused to publicly disclose the minutes.

Consequently Peter Steketee filed a FOIA action in the Kent County Circuit Court (Local Area Watch v City of Grand Rapids, Case No. 02-00218-CZ) in January of this year to compel disclosure of the closed session minutes and other public records the City was withholding. LAW then made a discovery request of the City for those minutes and gave the City until the end of February to comply. When the deadline for producing the minutes came up, Ophoff asked Steketee for several extensions of the deadline because he needed the extra time to answer our discovery request.

Now we know that Ophoff was lying to Steketee. Instead of using the extra time we had given him in good faith to produce the closed session minutes, he used that time to destroy the documents. So much for FOIA and the Open Meetings Act, the tools that the State legislature created a quarter-century ago for mere citizens like us to keep on an eye on our government if stooges like Ophoff can make toast of embarrassing records to prevent their public disclosure. If he and the City gets away with this, we’re just one step away from the Ministry of Truth here in ol’ River City.

Well, we’ll see. Steketee is teeing up an injunction request to stop Ophoff and the City from destroying any further evidence of what happened in those closed sessions. Keep your fingers and we’ll keep you informed.