Polluted Indy golf course could cost taxpayers $6M

For decades, the concoction of trash, industrial chemicals and sewage sludge buried near the Whispering Hills Golf Course was out of sight, out of mind — and, as far as Indiana environmental regulators were concerned, contained.

That is, until recently. In April 2014, an Indiana Department of Environmental Management site inspection discovered the landfill cap had eroded due to natural wear and tear, compromising a critical barrier designed to prevent the toxins from escaping.

Now, Indy Parks  may have to pony up as much as $6 million to install new protections for the contamination at the old Julietta Landfill, a longtime industrial dumpsite on the southeast side that the city converted into the public golf course in the early 1990s.

Officials say testing since 2014 has found no imminent threat to public health. But a nearby neighborhood group says residents are concerned, nonetheless, about what a leaking landfill could mean for them.

For taxpayers, the episode raises another question: How did the parks and recreation department, of all things, get saddled with cleaning up the sins of private industry from decades earlier?

The accidental landfill

Spanning 70 acres on the southeast corner of Brookville and Senour roads, the Julietta Landfill became a dumpsite almost by accident.

A former pig farm, the property was leased in the 1950s to a sand and gravel company. The mining operation left huge pits in the ground when it abandoned the site in the early 1960s, and residents began dumping their household waste there illegally, according to IDEM records.

Later that decade, it was leased to a private landfill operator, and served as a dump for commercial and industrial waste until 1976, when the Indiana State Board of Health determined the site’s geology was unsuitable for use as a landfill, and the private operator voluntarily closed it. By that time it had accumulated 2.6 million cubic yards of waste, including industrial chemicals, such as glue and oil.

Later, from 1982 to 1985, the city used it to store more than 16,000 tons of sludge from a municipal wastewater treatment plant — the solid, fertilizer-like substance left over from the sewage treatment process.

And as early as 1988, the city began trying to repurpose it as a golf course.

It's not clear now, from a review of IDEM documents, why the plans went forward. But IDEM regulators warned a city consultant in 1988 that the pollution at the site was so extensive that it was under consideration to be added to the National Priorities List, an Environmental Protection Agency designation that makes it eligible for federal Superfund cleanup dollars.

In 1995 — with a landfill cap and various monitoring protocols in place — Whispering Hills Golf Course opened to the public. But under state law, the parks department, as the landowner, also took on the long-term responsibility to keep what was buried there from getting out.

Costs mounting

The golf course itself is across Senour Road from the landfill, but the driving range sits at the northern end of where the refuse was buried. It is surrounded by things that ideally wouldn't border a polluted site. To the east there's a recreational fishing lake. To the west lies the Whispering Pines subdivision. Creeks crisscross the site.

That's what worries Jennifer Selm.

"Just the idea of what is leeching into Buck Creek," said Selm, the president of the Greater Troy Neighborhood Association, "it’s kind of disturbing."

While recent tests of water wells have come back clear, a review of IDEM records shows that hasn't always been the case. In 2009, IDEM issued a boil-water notice for a water well on the golf course, which was city-owned but privately run. In 2010 and 2011, IDEM issued additional violations for failing to conduct required testing. IndyStar could find no record of violations since then, and IDEM officials were not immediately available for comment.

When a 2014 site investigation found standing water atop the landfill, and evidence that the cap had been damaged, IDEM issued a violation notice to the city, setting off a series of assessments as the city and IDEM put together a plan to fix it. Under state law, whoever owns former landfill property has to maintain it, and monitor contaminants.

"We have been aggressively pursuing solutions," said Don Colvin, a planner at Indy Parks.

And the costs are adding up.

The city has spent nearly $300,000 already. And all told, Parks Director Linda Broadfoot said the project could cost as much as $6 million, spread out over a number of phases.

To put that $6 million into perspective, that's close to a fifth of the department's entire proposed budget for 2017, money that predominantly goes toward salaries, maintenance and day-to-day operations. It's also $1 million more than the first phase of the overhaul for Tarkington Park on the north side. World Sports Park on the east side cost $5.1 million.

In short, for a parks department that already lags most of its peers nationwide in funding — and a city that perpetually struggles to fund basic services — it's an expense it could ill afford.

Still, Broadfoot insists the department can cobble together the money.

“Unfortunately, it’s a side effect of owning a lot of land," she said. "Sometimes the land has a history that predates you that has to be dealt with.”

Call IndyStar reporter Brian Eason at (317) 444-6129. Follow him on Twitter: @brianeason.

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