BLOWING OUR OWN HORN

The Local Area Watch was founded in September 2000, and so it’s our fifth anniversary.  To celebrate we thought we’d blow our own horn.  Some of our accomplishments …

[1] The developer of the DeVos Place Convention Center stiffened the controls over the removal of contaminated urban fill from the project site as a consequence of our complaint to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality over the lack of such controls at the Boardwalk project site.

[2] Philanthropist Peter Wege decided against a $20 million gift to the Global Enterprise for Water Technologies project to redevelop the Monroe North water filtration plant as a museum and research center after we informed his office of the dumping of the Boardwalk project’s contaminated soil on the ground of the filtration plant and that the GEWT was a creature of the companies involved in the illegal dumping of that waste.  Instead Wege made a gift to the new art museum in downtown Grand Rapids.

[3] Similarly Michigan State University pulled its technical support from the GEWT project and the MDEQ ditched a $10 million grant for it after we prompted state legislators to inquire into the matter.  Because of their pressure, the MDEQ opened an investigation of the illegal offsite dumping of the Boardwalk’s contaminated soil.  Although the MDEQ did not prosecute the dumping as it should have, public bodies like MSU and the MDEQ did pull their support from GEWT which was nothing more than a front to cover up the dumping at the filtration plant.  That busted GEWT, which immediately folded its tent.

[4] The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland investigated and penalized Fifth Third Bancorp for improprieties in its acquisition of Old Kent Financial Corporation in response to our declaration of bank fraud filed with the U.S. Justice Department.  Also the bandit David Wagner, former chief of Old Kent, then lost his sinecures with both Fifth Third and the Federal Reserve – a good result we were indirectly responsible for.

[5] Kent County Circuit Court Judge H. David Soet resigned his seat on the local bench with two years left in his term after we filed a complaint against him in U.S. District Court for improperly pressuring a defense attorney to call River Rat Robert Wardrop as a witness in a trial to affirm false testimony he had given earlier the proceedings which were related to the illegal dumping of hazardous waste from the Boardwalk project site.  Soet had relied upon Wardrop’s false testimony to keep open for the Boardwalk’s developers an access road they needed for the rapid removal of contaminated soil from the project site.

There’s more to our credit, but I think posting five achievements for a fifth anniversary will do the trick.

Comments

[Laura Huey]

Thank you for the Local Area Watch. Good writing (and strange typos), info I don't get elsewhere, and ascerbic wit!

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Laura.

You're welcome, and thanks for the compliments. As for the strange typos, I'll talk to our Editor about that. ;)

Regards,
Bill