THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

WORKING CLASS HERO

The story below is a sadly predictable example of a state agency failing to protect workers from the greedy corner-cutting of larcenous employers.  However, you'd think that a local public figure who proudly proclaims his solidarity with the workingman wouldn't have hesitated to alert those workers about the danger their employers were exposing them to.  You'd think, but you'd be wrong about First Ward City Commissioner James Jendrasiak who is more comfortable in a three-piece suit than wearing a blue collar these days.

As told elsewhere on this site, contractors Pioneer Inc. and Dykema Excavators Inc. had their workers excavate 26,000 tons of contaminated soil from the Boardwalk project site without any protective gear or controls to prevent their exposure to the hazardous substances that laced that dirt.  To maintain the pretense that the soil was clean and needed no special handling, Pioneer and Dykema Excavators concealed the truth from their employees who exposed themselves to the waste.

At the time the workers were digging up this poison in the fall of 2000, I tried to get MIOSHA to intervene.  Incredibly, MIOSHA refused to take my complaint because I was neither a worker on the site nor a union member.  However, I knew that Jendrasiak was a union member, so he could make the complaint.  I gave him all the information he needed to take up the cause of the construction workers at the Boardwalk project site.  But Jendrasiak refused to get involved.  So much for sticking up for the working stiff when it counts.  You West Siders might want to keep this incident in mind when J.J. comes trolling for your votes.

Of course, Jendrasiak's opponent in the First Ward city commission race, Dave Shaffer, could raise this issue.  It's a legitimate one.  After all, the Boardwalk project is in the First Ward and it's good example of how little Jendrasiak will stick his neck out for his constituents.  But remember, Shaffer is backed by the Mavericks, a leading member of which is Chris Beckering.  It was Beckering's father as then-owner of Pioneer Inc. who sent his men under that old furniture factory that became the Boardwalk to dig out the toxic soil there without ever telling them of the danger they faced.  If Shaffer is silent on this, I suppose that'll tell West Side voters something about how beholden he is to his financial backers.

ST. GEORGE AND THE A.W.O.L. ENVIRONMENTALIST

To distract us from the City’s budget woes, Mayor George Heartwell returned from a mayors’ conference in Salt Lake City with a resolution in hand demanding that state and federal governments enact policies to bring the United States in accord with the carbon-cutting Kyoto Protocols to reduce global warming.  Heartwell put the measure before the City Commission, which unanimously and idiotically approved the plea to embrace these economy-wrecking protocols.  The fatuousness of the entire enterprise belies belief.

Not one out of seven commissioners knows enough about the Kyoto Protocols to know that there is no scientific foundation for the claim that human activity is causing “global warming”, let alone whether or not a general increase in temperatures is even a bad thing – assuming that it’s even happening.  (Climatological data shows that the post-Ice Age warming trend has in fact reversed.  It peaked most recently in the Middle Ages.)  Nor have any of the solons of the city clued into the fact that the Kyoto Protocols are a dead letter everywhere else in the world.  The Third World countries rejected them for the good reason that they are not going to stop their industrializing economies to soothe the pieties of bien pensant Westerners like St. George the Self-Righteous, and the Europeans have no intention of ever implementing them.

ST. GEORGE

Meanwhile, the Grand Rapids Press uncritically ran last Saturday editorials in support of the City Commission’s vote to destroy River City’s economy from Heartwell and his ally, Tom Leonard, executive director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council (WMEAC).  The Press let Heartwell blather on and on about his enlightenment in Salt Lake City by so-called experts in the “pending disaster known as global warming”, apparently too witless to realize that none of the majority of scientists who have refused to join the global warming bandwagon would not have been invited to dissent at such a cozy gathering of like-minded Chicken Littles.  Mindlessly, Heartwell drones on about how we in the U.S. and River City in particular must cut the carbon we emit into the air oblivious to the incredible feats of conservation we have already achieved in the use of fossil fuels in this country over the past three decades.  There just isn’t much more in the way of greenhouse gases to eliminate in the U.S. short of shutting down the country.

Ah yes, Heartwell does invoke the hoary escape hatch for all extreme environmentalist demands to get rid of fossil fuels:  Renewable energy.  Well, it appears that the mayor just doesn’t get it when it comes to the engineering of the energy infrastructure of any modern economy.  Fossil fuels are extremely compact compared to energy from wind, solar, hydro-electric, and biomass.  For any of these alternatives to provide any significant substitution for fossil fuels would entail huge tracts of land that would disrupt nature far beyond current industrial activities.  Windmills would need millions of acres of land along the migratory routes of birds.  Solar panels would carpet the deserts and plains destroying local habitats.  Hydro-electric would dam rivers and flood valleys.  Biomass would necessitate tilling areas that are marginal or even hostile to farming.  And none of this addresses the most basic problem with most of these alternatives when it comes to the nation’s electrical grid:  The generation of electricity must be synchronized with its consumption or the system blacks out.  A coal-fired generating plant can be turned on or shut down as electrical demand increases or decreases.  You can’t turn the wind on or off as you please.

THE A.W.O.L. ENVIRONMENTALIST

OK, enough of the primer on energy.  You get the idea.  St. George hasn’t a clue when it comes to the real world of energy policy.  He’d do more to stop global warming by shutting his piehole.  But there is more to this problem than his self-righteous sermonizing.  To address that, let me turn to the second editorial the Press ran on Saturday, the one by Leonard of WMEAC.  Leonard’s statement is burdened by the same faulty assumptions underlying Heartwell’s sermon, but he at least does us the favor of bulletin-pointing the resolution Heartwell and the commissioners passed.  In doing so, he highlights the resolution’s Trojan Horse of “promoting sustainable building practices” within the City, which empowers the City Commission and staff to embrace whatever goofy green ideas come along that make it harder and more expensive to build in River City.

That is the reason why Leonard’s editorial is disgusting.  He and his group are fixated upon telling us how we are going to live our lives instead of taking up the gauntlet for us when malefactors like the Boardwalk developers dump real poison into our backyards.  Although Leonard and WMEAC received piles of scientific, photographic, and videotape evidence from the Local Area Watch of the illegal excavation, transport, and disposal of 26,000 of hazardous waste from the Boardwalk project site, they did nothing but write a polite letter to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).  When the MDEQ responded by telling Leonard and his gang to bug off, that’s what they did.  We received no support whatsoever from River City’s foremost environmental activists as we have fought in the courts over the past three years to get the Boardwalk developers to clean up the toxic materials they spilled onto our streets, into our storm sewer system, and into illegal landfills like that at the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant.

Leonard and WMEAC were A.W.O.L. in this battle to protect you from the greedy scheme of the Boardwalk developers to turn a buck by burying their poison where your children play.  Yet, Leonard and WMEAC have the time and the resources to urge on the half-baked plans of Mayor Heartwell that do nothing but give the City government an excuse to interfere with how you live your life.  I am heartily sick of progressive phonies like St. George and the A.W.O.L. Environmentalist who talk up how much they care about you and your family when they want something from you and give you nothing but self-righteous sermons about how you need to do better when they fail to deliver.

RIVER RAT'S BROTHER BOOSTS BUCKS FOR MAYOR

Tom Wardrop, brother and business partner of River Rat Robert Wardrop (pictured to the right), was one of the four members of the Local Officers Compensation Commission who pushed for Mayor Heartwell's big pay increase.  (See article below.)  Unmentioned, unnoted, and unremarked anywhere is that this allegedly disinterested citizen is also a City contractor.  The Wardrop brothers run a three-man legal shop specializing in bankruptcy and immigration, yet managed in July 2002 to obtain a contract from the City of Grand Rapids for municipal legal services.

One might think having a City contractor on the compensation commission is unwise for it could lead to the appearance, if not the fact, of mutual back-scratching.  The Wardrops' case is particularly obnoxious because they got a contract for work they don't specialize in after River Rat Rob had given false testimony to the benefit of then-mayor Boss Logie's business clients in a Kent County Circuit Court case.

So you see, folks, these supposedly independent boards only lead to more mischief not less with the advantage to the malefactors of making crooked deals all the harder to reveal.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: THE MDEQ (UPDATE)

Pollute to your heart's content, citizens, because the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is moribund.  Budget cuts have left the agency dead in the water when it comes to enforcement (as though it were ever vigorous in that regard).  Actions that took weeks or month to clear the agency are now taking years.

So you'd think that the MDEQ would now, more than ever, welcome the diligence of ordinary citizens expending their own resources to hold polluters accountable through the judicial process, as allowed by state law in the form of "citizen suits".  (For an example, click here.)  You'd think, except that doing so steps on what remains of the MDEQ's bureaucratic toes.   No matter how little life is left in a government agency, it'll always muster the might to protect its prerogatives.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: G.R. LAW

[This is the sixth installment of our "River of Corruption" series reporting on the public officials and institutions who aided, either by action or inaction, the scheme of the Toxic Towers developers to turn the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant into an unlicensed hazardous waste landfill.]

We know all the jokes about what rats, vultures, and snakes lawyers are.  Like most jokes they are funny because there is truth in them.  While I certainly do not believe most lawyers are corrupt, I do believe that their profession can be profoundly dispiriting.  Seldom does an attorney get the opportunity to argue a case he is genuinely enthusiastic about on its merits.  Instead he must argue whatever comes his way, and so other considerations come into play to motivate him.  Too often that is winning for winning's sake (or more likely for the bucks his client will pay to do anything to win).

To keep them in line lawyers are, of course, bound by a code of ethics.  In Michigan, this code is embodied by the Rules of Professional Conduct based largely on the ABA's model code.  Most lawyers do pay heed to at least the most stringent requirements of the code.  However, there exists a contingent of lawyers for whom the code represents no limits upon their conduct.  They are aware that the courts and the agency policing them, the Attorney Grievance Commission, only address the most obvious and egregious attorney misconduct, if at all, so it's anything goes for them.

Let's introduce you to some of these outlaw lawyers, the Toxic Towers legal team ...

John Logie, formerly of Warner Norcross & Judd L.L.P. (now put out to pasture):  During Boss Logie's long reign as Mayor of River City he continued to work as a senior partner at the law firm of Warner Norcross.  Warner Norcross might pass as the region's white shoe law firm except that the lawyers there don't mind getting their hands dirty to get a deal done for their clients -- and as mayor Logie had his hands in everything.

One deal Logie took particular interest in was the Boardwalk project, the subject of this series.  Little wonder.  Two of Warner Norcross's biggest clients had interests in the project:  [1] Old Kent Bank (now Fifth Third Bank) as one of the developers to convert the old furniture factory into a residential-commercial complex, and [2] Spectrum Health Corporation as the project's anchor tenant through its medical training consortium, G.R. Medical & Education Research Center.  To succeed the Boardwalk project needed the City's help, and Logie stepped right in.

First, the Boardwalk developers wanted a tax subsidies, because the ill-conceived project would not otherwise be financially viable.  To this end Logie used his public offices as mayor of Grand Rapids and as a member of the Monroe North Tax Increment Financing Authority to push through a $2.5 million taxpayer subsidy for the developers.  (See more about this below.)  He also used the office of mayor to petition the National Park Service to grant the Boardwalk project site historic landmark status, so that it would eligible for tax credits which Fifth Third would receive.

Second, when the Boardwalk project manager James Czanko complained that it was too expensive to clean the project site of its hazardous waste (mostly contaminated soil -- see "Poison" for details), Logie, as mayor, influenced the City Commission to sell one of the Boardwalk contractors the defunct Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant as a cheap dump for the project's hazardous waste.

Finally, when the City Commission received notice that the Boardwalk developers were using the Filtration Plant as a hazardous waste dump, Logie twice met with the commissioners in closed sessions and both times successfully lobbied them to shut down inquiries into the dumping allegations.  Later Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff had the minutes of these secret meetings destroyed which stopped them from becoming evidence in a federal proceeding.  (See below for details.)

Dick Wendt of Dickinson Wright P.L.L.C.:  As mentioned above, the Boardwalk developers sought a large taxpayer subsidy for their project.  The City retained Wendt as a member of the Dickinson Wright law firm to negotiate a tax subsidy agreement.  (See related story here.)  However, he had no business in accepting this assignment, because Dickinson Wright was also representing the Boardwalk developers!  A blatant conflict of interest, and to no surprise Wendt brought back to the City a generous $2.5 million taxpayer subsidy for the developers.  Unfortunately, the City Commission, City Comptroller Stan Milanowski, and the Attorney Grievance Commission refused to redress Wendt's embrace of this conflict of interest. 

William "Jay" Fisher of Dickinson Wright P.L.L.C. (and later Fisher & Dickinson P.C.):  Fisher was the lead Dickinson Wright attorney representing the Boardwalk developers, their lead contractor Pioneer Incorporated, and Pioneer owner Thomas Beckering.  When the project became landlocked because of street construction at the very time Pioneer needed to rapidly remove all of the hazardous contaminated soil from beneath the old furniture factory, Fisher presented false evidence to the Kent County Circuit Court that allowed his clients to take control of a neighbor's driveway connecting the project site to a public street.  Thus, Fisher facilitated the removal the Boardwalk's hazardous waste to the Filtration Plant for permanent disposal.

Soon after this, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) initiated an inquiry into the Boardwalk developers' soil removal activities.  Fisher helped his clients to frame an alibi denying any permanent removal of soil from the project site, contaminated or otherwise.  When the local MDEQ response unit demanded evidence of this alibi, Fisher worked with Frank Marshall of Superior Environmental Corporation, the developers' environmental consultant, to produce a report that purportedly accounted for all soil removed from the site.  As evidence, the report presented fraudulent affidavits from the project's key employees and phony soil test results.  Fisher then delivered this report, known as the Marshall Report, to the MDEQ, which that agency relied upon to exonerate the Boardwalk developers and their contractors of any wrongdoing.  (Superior Environmental has subsequently denied the validity of the Marshall Report to the Kent County Circuit Court.)

Gary Schenk of Schenk & Boncher P.C.:  Schenk, as the attorney for Dykema Excavtors Inc., one of the lead contractors for the Boardwalk project and the owner of the Filtration Plant, found himself in a position similar to Fisher's when the MDEQ began its inquiry.  To prepare a response to that inquiry, Schenk received a report from Prein & Newhof Inc., Dykema's environmental consultants, which indicated that his client had removed large quantities of "urban fill" (contaminated soil) from the Boardwalk site and disposed of it at the Filtration Plant.  Schenk redacted that report, which left the impression that Dykema Excavators had not removed any contaminated soil from the Boardwalk site, and then forwarded his version of it to the MDEQ.

Schenk later buttressed his misleading redaction by sending to the MDEQ results for a soil test that he represented as typical of the soil Dykema Excavators had been working with.  In fact the test was taken of recently placed clean fill at the project site.  Furthermore, even though his client had on two occasions (including once in his presence) admitted to the MDEQ that Dykema Excavators had dumped Boardwalk soil at the Filtration Plant, Schenk denied this activity to the Kent County Circuit Court, the U.S. District Court, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Robert Wardrop of Wardrop & Wardrop P.C.:  The odd thing about Wardrop is that he didn't appear to have any dog in this fight.  He did not represent any party involved in the removal of hazardous waste from the Boardwalk project site, yet he gratuitously inserted himself into the Toxic Towers dispute to help the developers facilitate their scheme to dump the Boardwalk's hazardous waste offsite.  Wardrop, at Fisher's beckoning (see above), three times gave false testimony to the Kent County Circuit Court to help the Boardwalk developers get and maintain control of the only route connecting the project site to a public street.  (As it later turned out, Wardrop's law firm had an interest in leasable space at the Boardwalk, and he was also rewarded by Logie with a City contract after he provided his false testimony to the court.)

Todd Dickinson of Fisher & Dickinson P.C.:  Dickinson partnered up with Fisher to form Fisher & Dickinson, which picked up the Boardwalk development companies, Pioneer Inc., and Thomas Beckering as clients.  Fisher took a behind-the-scenes role after initially presenting Wardrop's false evidence to the Kent County Circuit Court (see above).  Dickinson continued to represent Wardrop's evidence as truthful to the court even after receiving documents signed by Wardrop himself showing that his testimony was false -- which in fact the court ultimately relied upon to rule that Wardrop's evidence was indeed false.

Daniel Ophoff of the City Attorney's Office:  As previously reported, Ophoff destroyed public records after receiving notice that they could be evidence in a pending federal lawsuit.  Ophoff subsequently falsely denied this destruction to the Kent County Circuit Court and the U.S. District Court.

John Ferroli of Dykema Gossett P.L.L.C.:  Finally, we have Ferroli, attorney for Fifth Third Bank.  The bank, in conjunction with National City Bank, had lent the Boardwalk developers $25 million to complete their project.  However, the bank had acted against its apparent interest when, contrary to standard procedure, it did not request that the MDEQ verify the developers' environmental assessments for the project.  This helped the developers to conceal the false and misleading statements made in these assessments.  Ferroli sought to punish us for filing a complaint against the bank's material assistance to the developers' illegal dumping scheme.  To this end he filed a dishonest statement with the Kent County Circuit Court asserting that we had knowingly or recklessly alleged facts about the dumping that were false and by this means fraudulently pursued sanctions to silence us.

Whether or not this is a representative slice of G.R. law, these attorneys lacked the compunction to refrain from making false statements to law enforcement and the courts if that helped their clients escape the consequences of their involvement in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal.  Lying as practiced by certain lawyers is often dismissed as "sharp practice" and even admired in some circles for its cleverness.  It is, of course, despicable and almost nothing can be done about it, because judges don't want to hear about it and the Attorney Grievance Commission has no will to investigate it.

Nevertheless, what these attorneys have done is an assault upon the integrity of our judicial system.  It is obstruction.  Even if the authorities will not act, you now know them for who they are.

Next installment:  The courts.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: THE MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

[Note:  This is the fifth installment of our series about the failure of our public officials and institutions to respond to the Toxic Towers dumping scandal.]

It will come as a surprise to no one that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) was ineffective in handling the illegal dumping of contaminated soil at the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant and other locations in the Grand Rapids vicinity.  First of all, the MDEQ has an unofficial policy to not police brownfield redevelopment in urban areas.  Second, its resources for field investigations are limited, so that a determined polluter could obstruct an investigation with enough lies and false evidence.

Finally, the MDEQ's culture of accommodation instead of confrontation makes its officials generally gun-shy in putting tough questions to miscreants, which has the perverse result of the MDEQ excusing the miscreants' violations when they are discovered to justify its prior lax enforcement.

Altogether this means that the MDEQ lacked the institutional will, means, and integrity to challenge the false affidavits and rigged soil tests that the Boardwalk developers presented to it to obstruct its investigation into charges that they were dumping contaminated Boardwalk soil at the Filtration Plant and elsewhere.  Once the MDEQ signed off on this false evidence to exonerate the Boardwalk developers and their contractors Pioneer Inc. and Dykema Excavators Inc. of wrongdoing, nothing has shaken the MDEQ from this stance -- not even two demands by the Michigan attorney general's office to properly investigate the dumping allegations were heeded.  The MDEQ simply excluded from inquiry all the evidence that contradicted its original exoneration of the developers and their contractors.

The misfeasance, if not malfeasance, of the MDEQ in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal is detailed in a report we sent to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Piotrowski in August 2004.  (Click here for the report.)  We'll cover only the salient points of the MDEQ's failure to serve the public interest here:

1. The MDEQ opened its original investigation of the Boardwalk developers and contractors on November 2, 2000, under pressure from local state legislators and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  On November 8, 2000, the MDEQ convened a meeting with representatives of the Boardwalk development companies, Pioneer, Dykema Excavators, Superior Environmental, and the City of Grand Rapids.  The MDEQ officials instructed them to provide an explanation of all soil removal activities at the Boardwalk project site.
2. By November 16, 2000, Superior Environmental, Attorney William Fisher, and Attorney Gary Schenk submitted their clients' alibi to the MDEQ.  They whitewashed the matter by stating that none of the off-site dumping of contaminated soil from the Boardwalk project site ever occurred.  (Apparently, they were not aware of the conclusive videotape surveillance recording that very activity by Pioneer and Dykema Excavators.)
3. On November 17, 2000, then-director of the MDEQ Russell Harding parroted this alibi in a letter to the State House and State Senate and stated that it was a sufficient explanation before any evidence supporting the alibi had even been collected the MDEQ.
4. On November 20, 2000, the MDEQ instructed the Boardwalk developers and contractors to provide evidence of their alibi.  On January 2, 2001, Superior Environmental did so in the form a report (sometimes referred to as the "Marshall Report").  The report concluded that there had been no wrongdoing based upon the evidence in its appendices.  This evidence consisted of affidavits of personnel who worked at the Boardwalk project site that falsely denied any off-site disposal of the site's soil and soil tests that were rigged to sample clean fill and not the actual contaminated soil removed from the site.  The Marshall Report confirmed MDEQ Director Harding's letter to state legislators and so the MDEQ exonerated the Boardwalk developers and their contractors of any wrongdoing.
5. Soon after this Assistant A.G. Piotrowski learned that there existed hundreds of hours of surveillance videotape that showed that the Marshall Report was a fraud.  On February 21, 2001, he instructed the MDEQ to assign a criminal investigator to investigate the charges of illegal dumping against the Boardwalk developers, Pioneer, and Dykema Excavators.  The MDEQ responded to Piotrowski in bad faith by assigning a newly hired detective who had a notorious reputation in the law enforcement community as an incompetent.
6. A year later in March 2002 the MDEQ detective concluded her investigation and again exonerated the Boardwalk developers, Pioneer, and Dykema Excavators of wrongdoing on the basis of a lack evidence.  However, her investigation officially excluded from any consideration the very evidence that incriminated these suspects and the original MDEQ inquiry.  Excluded were:  Soil tests of the major dumpsite, the Filtration Plant; all of the surveillance videotape; the photographs showing one of the soil tests at the Boardwalk project site was rigged; and even an admission she had obtained from a Pioneer truck driver that he signed his affidavit knowing that it contained false statements!
7. Despite the egregiously flawed nature of this investigation (indeed, it is hard to see how this evidence implicating the Boardwalk developers and their contractors was accidentally excluded from consideration), it was accepted by law enforcement and the courts as gospel and the Marshall Report was falsely enshrined by the Boardwalk attorneys as the official explanation of the events that had occurred at the Boardwalk project site.
8. However, in May 2003 the Local Area Watch produced a report containing several series of prints from the surveillance videotape evidence that clearly showed Pioneer and Dykema Excavators removing contaminated soil from the Boardwalk project site in direct contradiction to the affidavits in the Marshall Report.  L.A.W. sent copies of the report to several state officials.
9. Assistant A.G. Piotrowski received a copy of this report and then reviewed the videotape evidence for himself.  Consequently he ordered the MDEQ to collect soil samples from the Filtration Plant for testing, which the MDEQ did on February 2, 2004.  On April 30, 2004, Jim Sygo, deputy director of the MDEQ, informed Piotrowski that the soil test results and the Marshall Report once again proved that no contaminated soil from the Boardwalk project site had been dumped at the Filtration Plant.  However, Sygo's statement to Piotrowski was false and misleading, and it had no scientific foundation.
10. On June 30, 2004, former MDEQ official and forensic geologist Robert Hayes conducted the first and only scientific analysis of the Filtration Plant soil test results and discovered that the soil had the same unique chemical fingerprint as the Boardwalk's contaminated soil.  Then on July 24, 2004, Superior Environmental filed a pleading with the Kent County Circuit Court in which it disavowed the Marshall Report and refused to affirm its truthfulness.

Thus, all of the evidence the MDEQ has relied upon to exonerate the Boardwalk developers, Pioneer, and Dykema Excavators of illegally dumping the Boardwalk's contaminated soil at the Filtration Plant has been either scientifically refuted or disavowed by its authors.  Yet the MDEQ continues to dig in its heels and deny reality.  The public interest, health, and safety be damned when it comes to the MDEQ protecting its bureaucratic hide. 

GENERAL GEORGE'S COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

In the wake of L.A.W.'s direct mailing to the Creston Heights neighborhood surrounding the contaminated Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant (click here and here for details), General George a.k.a. Mayor Heartwell launched a counter-offensive through that neighborhood on Monday.  He touted to local residents all the goodies the City has provided them over the past several years while he shamelessly ignored the unlicensed hazardous waste landfill the Boardwalk developers created at their doorstep and the role he played on the City Commission six years ago to make that possible.

Perhaps the most disgusting utterance Heartwell made during his campaign was his vow to fight for more taxpayer hand-outs to community activists "until God's reign of justice permeates our world."  Self-righteousness is always obnoxious, but it is particularly vile when in service to a strategy to divert public attention from the City's alliance with the Boardwalk developers to crush all attempts to remedy the illegal hazardous waste dumping at the filtration plant.  (Click here and here for that story.)

Let General George know his reminders about libraries and community centers already built do not make us forget about the unlicensed hazardous waste landfill the City let the Boardwalk developers create in our midst.  E-mail him today.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE (UPDATE)

[Note:  Click here for the original article in this continuing series.]

Today I learned that Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff is acting as the spokesman for the defendants in the hazardous waste lawsuit we filed against the developers of the Boardwalk project, the recently completed residential-commercial project on Monroe Avenue north of downtown.

On the taxpayers' dime, Ophoff is now speaking to the local court on behalf of private parties, including Pioneer Incorporated, Dykema Excavators Inc., 940 Monroe L.L.C., and Superior Environmental Corporation.  All of these companies have been identified as participants in a conspiracy to remove the hazardous waste underlying the Boardwalk project site (see "Poison" for details) and passing it off as clean soil to evade the state's hazardous waste storage, transport, and disposal regulations (see "Dumping Scandal FAQ's" for details).

Why has the City Attorney's Office volunteered to act as a spokesman for these polluters?  What is the justification for the taxpayer subsidizing the legal expenses of private parties who have been videotaped and photographed in the act of violating the state's hazardous waste management laws?  Why won't the City Attorney or the City Commission respond to these questions?

Click here to e-mail Mayor Heartwell and the City Commission to demand an explanation for the defense pact the City Attorney's Office has made with the Boardwalk developers.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

[Note:  This is the fourth article in our "River of Corruption" series highlighting the failure of various public officials and institutions to respond to the illegal dumping of hazardous waste at the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant and elsewhere.]

The Grand Rapids City Attorney's Office is the second entrant into the Hall of Shame for its role in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal.  Shamelessly the lawyers of that office have allied themselves with the Boardwalk developers, who illegally dumped 26,000 tons of hazardous waste (see the "Poison" article for a description of this toxic stew) next to a residential neighborhood in Creston Heights and elsewhere in the Grand Rapids vicinity.  Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff, Catherine Mish, and Janice Bailey have helped the developers' attorneys oppose every citizen suit brought on your behalf in state and federal court to clean up the contamination caused by the developers' deliberate, reckless, and dangerous dumping of toxic materials into our local environment.

Like it or not, your tax dollars, courtesy of the City Attorney's Office, are helping to defend these polluters.  The Boardwalk developers didn't care who they exposed to the poisoned soil they dug up from the Boardwalk project site.  To maintain the false pretense that this soil was clean, they let their workers excavate it without any protection from exposure to it.  They let it wash into and contaminate the City sewer system.  They let it spread across neighboring properties.  And they dumped it out in the open without any containment at the nearby Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant, creating an unlicensed hazardous waste landfill there.

The City Attorney's Office could have taken your side in this matter.  The Boardwalk developers dumped their hazardous waste at the Filtration Plant while the City still held title to it.  Instead of parroting then-Mayor John Logie's line that nothing happened at the Filtration Plant, the City Attorney's Office could have held the polluters to account for poisoning the grounds of a nationally registered historic landmark.  Instead the attorneys for the City sided with the developers, which has left taxpayers open to liability for the clean-up of the Filtration Plant and the fines attached to the developers' violations of state environmental laws.  (A figure that potentially exceeds $30 billion!)

To demonstrate how callous the City Attorney's Office is toward the public interest, Assistant City Attorneys Ophoff and Mish do not even deny in court documents the facts of the illegal dumping at the Filtration Plant.  Since the developers' environmental consultant disavowed the last piece of evidence claiming no illegal dumping occurred, how could they?  So, no hard evidence exists to refute the videotapes, photographs, admissions by employees of the developers, and soil testing that all confirm that the Boardwalk developers dumped 20,000 tons of hazardous waste at the Filtration Plant.  Yet, the City Attorney's Office continues to side with polluters.

Even worse, the City Attorney's Office deliberately destroyed evidence documenting then-Mayor Logie's successful backroom attempts to dissuade the Grand Rapids City Commission from making inquiries into the illegal dumping at the Filtration Plant.  (This story has been covered in the previous installment of the series and elsewhere on this site.  Click here.)  Give credit for this contemptuous assault against our right to open government to Ophoff, who was responsible for the destruction of the documents, and Mish, who brazenly defended their destruction before the Michigan Court of Appeals with half-truths and evasions.

Meanwhile, dear readers, give some thought to why the City Attorney's Office, whose typical mode of operation is pusillanimity, has been so vociferous in the defense of the Boardwalk developers.  Why is that Assistant City Attorneys Ophoff, Mish, and Bailey have lined up against you, whose health, safety, and pocketbook has been put in jeopardy by these remorseless polluters?  You may want to put that question to the head of the City Attorney's Office, Philip Balkema.  (Click here for his e-mail address.)  If he won't give you a satisfactory answer, it's time to tell Mayor Heartwell and the City Commission to sweep that office clean and hire lawyers who will defend you and not the self-anointed "players" in town.  (Click here for their e-mail addresses.)

Remember, folks, you pay these people.  They work for you.

Next:  The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

RIVER OF CORRUPTION: THE CITY COMMISSION

[Note:  This is the third article in our "River of Corruption" series highlighting the failure of various public officials and institutions to respond to the illegal dumping of hazardous waste at the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant and elsewhere.]

Our first entrant into the Hall of Shame for its role in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal is the Grand Rapids City Commission.  The commissioners distinguished themselves in their submissiveness to then-Mayor John Logie's agenda in support of the Boardwalk project (a.k.a. Toxic Towers).  The two largest clients of Logie's law firm had interests in the project (Fifth Third Bank -- then known as Old Kent Bank -- who is one of the Boardwalk developers, and Spectrum Health, whose training consortium is the Boardwalk's anchor tenant), and never once did the commissioners challenge Logie on this glaring conflict of interest between his public duty and his private business affairs.  Instead they rolled over for him each and every time the project needed help from the City.

Let's review the City Commission's record.

CITY TAX SUBSIDY:  City staffers looked hard and long to find a tax-subsidy for the developers of the Boardwalk project.  They found none.  No problem.  Logie was sitting on the board of the City's Monroe North Tax Increment Financing Authority (MNTIFA), and so they invented a subsidy funded by that agency to the tune of $2.5 million.  The City Commission rubberstamped the deal in September 1999 on the vague promise that the developers would include lots of low-income housing in the project.

When the Boardwalk developers inevitably reneged on the low-income housing to make room for high-rent apartments and commercial office space, Logie had the MNTIFA's attorney draft an amendment to preserve the tax subsidy deal.  The fact that this attorney, Dick Wendt of Dickinson Wright P.L.L.C., worked for the same firm representing the Boardwalk developers alerted none of the commissioners to question the propriety of the amendment.  The City Commission again rubberstamped it in June 2001.

However, to get the tax subsidy the Boardwalk developers had to show the City invoices recording at least $25 million of improvements they had put into the project.  The developers refused to do this.  Instead lead developer Thomas Beckering submitted to the City a building permit claiming that there were $150 million in improvements.  When that didn't work, the City interpreted the permit to mean only $15 million in improvements were made, allowing the City Assessor to value the completed Broadwalk project at less than half of the $31 million that Beckering had stated in a letter to the Assistant City Manager Eric DeLonge that his group had invested in the project!

Thus, the Boardwalk developers got their tax subsidy from the City through a low-ball assessment, and the City Commission has done nothing to date to correct this.

SALE OF THE FILTRATION PLANT:  James Czanko, the Boardwalk's project manager, complained to City officials that remediation of the project's hazardous waste was going to be very expensive.  (No kidding.  Everything along Monroe Avenue north of downtown is built atop contaminated urban fill.)  He needed a solution.  Fortunately, then-Mayor Logie was there to provide the Boardwalk developers with what they wanted:  A cheap nearby landfill.

In February 1999 Logie persuaded the City Commission to reject a $600,000 offer to purchase the defunct Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant and to accept instead a $400,000 offer from Dykema Excavators Inc. for the purpose of "storing dirt" there.  As it happened Dykema Excavators was one of the lead contractors for the Boardwalk project and its owner was also one of the project's developers.  The Filtration Plant was located only a few blocks north of the Boardwalk project site, and its grounds contained large empty concrete water tanks -- ready-made to be filled with dirt, such as the Boardwalk's contaminated soil (see "Poison" ).

Commissioner James Jendrasiak and some of his fellow commissioners were suspicious enough of Dykema Excavators' plan to use the Filtration Plant for the odd purpose of dirt storage.  They were concerned that Dykema Excavators would dump "toxic dirt", as Jendrasiak phrased it, into the plant's water tanks.  So they added to the purchase agreement a provision that required Dykema Excavators to have all dirt to be used as fill at the Filtration Plant inspected at its source by the City Engineer to ensure that it was free of contamination.

Enforcement of this provision was immediately dropped by the City Engineer after the sale of the Filtration Plant to Dykema Excavators was closed in May 1999.  Thereafter, the City's Environmental Protection Department refused to take any complaints that contaminated soil was being dumped at the Filtration Plant.  When the City Commission was informed of the City's failure to protect the surrounding Creston Heights neighborhood from Dykema Excavators turning the Filtration Plant into an illegal hazardous waste dump, it did nothing under the direction of then-Mayor Logie.

DESTRUCTION OF CITY RECORDS:  Logie and the City Commissioners discussed the illegal dumping at the Filtration Plant at least twice.  Once on March 6, 2001, and again on May 8, 2001, in executive sessions closed to the public.  At the March closed meeting Logie browbeat the commissioners into subsmission.  According to Commissioner Jendrasiak who attended the meeting, Logie said that the allegations of dumping at the Filtration Plant were lies and that there was no conflict of interest between his political involvement in this matter and his business ties.  The City Commission acquiesced to Logie.

At the May closed meeting Logie learned that the commissioners had requested a report from the City's Environmental Protection Department about the problem at the Filtration Plant.  He leaned on the commissioners to scrub the report.  Again according to Commissioner Jendrasiak, Logie told them that they would be embarrass by an inquiry that would turn up nothing improper about Dykema Excavators' use of the Filtration Plant.  Again the City Commission caved in to Logie.  (Scientific analysis of soil tests taken three years later prove that Logie misled the City Commission.)

Consequently, the Local Area Watch asked Logie to disclosed to the public the minutes of these closed sessions.  He refused.  In January 2002 we then sued for their disclosure under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act.  In March 2002 Logie learned that these closed session minutes might become evidence in a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.  Therefore, the City Attorney's Office destroyed the minutes to forever prevent their disclosure.

To date City Commissioners have not only refused to investigate this arrogant disregard for the rights of citizens under the Freedom of Information Act (or, even worse, the possibility that City staffers were involved in the destruction of evidence subject to a federal inquiry), they have taken orders from the City Attorney's Office to not even discuss the matter with the public.

Folks, this is only just the start of the City Commission's misfeasance in looking out for your interests.  They have let themselves be cowed at every turn by those who have a stake in keeping the Toxic Towers dumping scandal under wraps.  Click here for e-mail links to your City Commissioners and let them know it's well past time for them to start working for you and not the private agendas of Boss Logie and his ilk.

Next:  The City Attorney's Office.