The city of Fort Myers spent $5.5 million to clean up and defend itself in the South Street sludge saga.
The city, facing a lawsuit from residents, began to clean up the site, which contained high levels of arsenic, in October 2018. By the summer of 2019, the sludge was gone.
In February, Judge Shari Polster Chappell tossed the lawsuit out of federal court because the city had cleaned up the sludge.
The most recent action taken on the sludge was at the beginning of May when city council voted to pay an additional $50,000 to Holland & Knight, the outside law firm that helped the city defend itself against the suit.
About $505,000 went toward fees for Holland & Knight.
Residents that lived in the area were unaware of the sludge site and the arsenic until The News-Press published a story about it in 2017. The city used the site as dumping ground for waste from its water treatment plant.
The lawsuit against the city was filed in March 2018 by a group of residents who wanted to get the sludge removed from the Dunbar area, a majority black area. They also wanted medical monitoring to be done for residents of the area.
The matter remains open because the plaintiffs believe the city should pay their legal fees because the lawsuit is what caused the city to clean up the sludge, court records show.
More: Federal judge dismisses suit against City of Fort Myers for dumping toxic sludge
The city’s response was that “plaintiffs were not the catalyst for the city’s remediation efforts because the efforts were underway before the plaintiff’s threatened or filed suit.”
The judge has not filed an order on the question of fees, records show.
The 4-acre sludge site is sandwiched between Henderson and Midway avenues to the west and east, respectively. It is bordered by South Street on its north side and by Jeffcott Street on the south.
The land falls within Ward 2, represented by Councilman Johnny Streets.
The price tag seems high, but it needed to be done to get the sludge removed, Streets said.
“We had an issue, it wasn’t taken care of and it was my desire for the people to get it done,” Streets said of the removal. “The cost is not an issue as far as I’m concerned when it comes to public health and safety.
“Some people probably feel they didn’t get total justice,” Streets said.
In a 2018 letter to the city, Jon Iglehart, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection South District director, wrote that once the sludge was removed the city would be responsible for onsite and offsite testing to see whether the sludge had been responsible for high levels of arsenic.
More: Is Fort Myers' decision to dump toxic sludge in Dunbar racist?
The South Street property is under what's known as "post active remediation," meaning that DEP will continue to monitor specific wells for a year to determine whether the cleanup was successful, according to Alexandra Kuchta, a spokeswoman for the South District Office of the DEP.
Cleanup has reduced soil arsenic levels, but samples analyzed by DEP reveal arsenic concentrations that "are slightly above DEP's groundwater clean-up target level."
Additional metals found to be above the groundwater clean-up target level include iron, manganese and uranium.
Because of this, three monitoring wells will be added to better determine the origin of the arsenic concentrations found in the samples," Kuchta said.
"DEP will continue working with the city to ensure clean-up efforts have successfully reduced the groundwater arsenic levels to the groundwater clean-up target level. As an aside, there is no threat to public health because the neighborhood is served by public drinking water that meets all standards," she added.
The city will soon be putting a 6-foot decorative fence around the stormwater ponds left behind, according to a city spokeswoman.
Fish, frogs, tadpoles and wading birds have been observed there.
More: Stormwater ponds will replace toxic sludge in Fort Myers
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Fort Myers spent more than $5M on South Street sludge clean up, lawsuit - The News-Press
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