We received an interesting document from the City Attorney's office. Apparently in response to our victories in the Michigan Court of Appeals, the City wants the court to know about a letter Jim Sygo, Deputy Director of the MDEQ, wrote on April 30, 2004. The City copied us on its notice to the court, which of course included a copy of Sygo's letter.
Earlier this year, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Piotrowski ordered the MDEQ to test the soil of the old Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant for the presence of hazardous waste, which we had reported been dumped there by the developers of the Berkey & Gay project (now known as "The Boardwalk"). The MDEQ collected the soil samples on February 2, 2004, and Sygo's letter reports the results of the chemical testing of these samples and his conclusion as to what these results mean. Sygo sums everything up with:
"It is the DEQ's position that the allegations associated with the relocation of soil from the former Berkey & Gay property have been adequately evaluated and the results do not suggest that any unlawful activity has occurred. Consequently, the DEQ considers this matter to be closed and will take no further action at this time."
Well, that would seem to be that, wouldn't it? How about the rest of the story ...
Sygo's letter, obstensibly written to yours truly (who for whatever reason did not receive the letter), was more importantly copied to Piotrowski, who had re-opened the criminal investigation of the Berkey & Gay developers' illegal dumping of hazardous waste. Piotrowski had reviewed videotape and other compelling evidence of the Berkey & Gay developers' environmental violations, which refuted the MDEQ's prior conclusion that nothing had happened. Piotrowski was also disturbed that the MDEQ's investigation excluded from consideration the evidence of the videotape, photographs, and an admission from one of the developers' dump truck drivers to making false statements in affidavits submitted to the MDEQ.
So, Piotrowski ordered the MDEQ to test soil at the Berkey & Gay developers' biggest dumpsite, the old filtration plant, which the MDEQ had previously refused to do. It had insisted relying upon the affidavits from the Berkey & Gay developers, such as that of the recanting dump truck driver, and so did not want to find any evidence refuting those affidavits. Plainly the MDEQ had a bureaucratic incentive to not have its closure of the case questioned by the Attorney General's office. Nevertheless, it did as instructed, collected the samples, tested them, and then analyzed them.
The MDEQ's analysis by staff statistician Sarah Hession was interesting. She found that the contamination profile of the Berkey & Gay soil was the same as that of the filtration plant samples, only that the contamination of the filtration plant samples was in lower concentrations. Well, of course, because the 20,000 cubic yards of Berkey & Gay contamination dumped at the filtration plant was mixed in with maybe another 80,000-100,000 cubic yards of dirt from other sources. In short, the MDEQ's tests prove that the soil at the Filtration Plant came from the contaminated Berkey & Gay site -- as we had said for the past three years.
However, Sygo decided to interpret Hession's work differently. Without any scientific foundation he asserted in his letter that Hession's analysis proved that the Berkey & Gay project site was not the source of the soil at the Filtration Plant: "The results of the statistical analysis indicate no similarity between the soils within the former clearwells [of the Filtration Plant] and the Berkey & Gay site." Hession in her analysis drew no conclusions as to the source of the soil. So, to buttress this assertion, Sygo again relied upon the false and discredited affidavits and other evidence that the Berkey & Gay developers had previously submitted to the MDEQ to bamboozle them: "Furthermore, we can not substantiate [L.A.W.'s] claim that eight hundred truckloads of contaminated soil were transported off-site for disposal at unlicensed landfills. Interviews, sworn statements, mass balance calculations, and contractor documention accounted for all of the other materials that were removed from the Berkey & Gay site." Yeah, all self-serving evidence provided the culprits.
Although Sygo's conclusion is official, it is bogus -- and it wasn't intended to persuade L.A.W. that nothing happened. The real audience for Sygo's letter of April 30th was the Attorney General's office. Be assured we'll ask forensic geologist Bob Hayes to put the ki-bosh on this bit of deception by the people our tax dollars are paying to protect us -- not the polluters.
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