NO LONGER DON QUIXOTE

The week before last I announced the good news that the Michigan Court of Appeals reinstated our hazardous waste complaint against the City of Grand Rapids and the Boardwalk developers.  Press reporter Jim Harger later gave me a call to inquire about the appellate court decision.  Then on Saturday, May 7th, the Press ran the following article by Harger:

"Local industrial [Industrialist? Sounds pretty grandiose. I like it!] William Tingley said Friday his lawsuit against the City of Grand Rapids and the developers of the Boardwalk apartment complex is back on track after a Michigan Court of Appeals ruling. [True, I "said" that, but no one needs to take my word for it, because the court publicly announced its decision the day before.]

"Tingley, whose family owns an auto parts company [Auto parts? That's news to me. Minor flub.] next door to [the?] Boardwalk, claims the city allowed developers of the former Berkey and Gay furniture factory to dump soil tainted by hazardous chemicals at the former Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant. [Well, I give Harger credit for concisely stating our complaint for once, though there's admittedly more to it than that.]

"Tingley's case was thrown out of Kent County Circuit Court in 2002. ["Thrown out" sounds like editorializing, but then saying it was "dismissed" would suggest procedural integrity in then-Judge Soet's action. Yeah, that's the same Judge Soet who resigned his office four months later with two years left in his term after we had brought to the attention of federal authorities his shenanigans behind tossing out our hazardous waste complaint.]

"While the appellate court denied most of Tingley's appeals, Friday's ruling reinstates his accusations that the state's Hazardous Waste Management Act was violated.  [Just the heart and soul of our complaint, that's all. Well, at least Harger's no longer calling me Don Quixote tilting at windmills.]

" 'We're finally going to get the fact-finding process we've been looking for,' he said.

"Tingley hopes the court will order a clean-up of the former filtration plant site. [And, as I told Harger, I hope the court hits these crooked developers with at least a fraction of the $30 billion in fines available under state law. After all, they deliberately exposed us to the poison underlying the Berkey & Gay site to get rid of it as fast and cheaply as possible.]  The city since has sold the plant for redevelopment."

What can I say, folks?  Certainly not in-depth reporting, but at least it's a plain statement of the most recent round in this battle.  That's an improvement in the Press's reportage of this issue in which, if editor Mike Lloyd and the gang weren't ignoring the story, they were painting me as a loon.