River Forest Cleaners admits its dry cleaning chemicals seeped into the ground. That much, they’ve owned up to for years, submitting multiple plans to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for how to deal with the pollution.
But the dry cleaning company denies it has a legal responsibility to clean up its neighbor’s property, a home just around the corner at 423 Ashland that’s owned by Forest Park National Bank.
That’s what lawyers for River Forest Cleaner’s holding company and founder wrote in response last Thursday to a lawsuit from Forest Park National. Both properties sit on a block that’s been targeted for a massive TIF redevelopment project by the village.
E&H Enterprises, the holding company, and Edward Ditchfield, the founder, were sued by Forest Park National earlier this year in an effort by the bank to get its property cleaned up.
The chemical contamination, Forest Park National wrote in its original complaint, was preventing the bank from reselling the foreclosed home at 423 Ashland.
Daniel Watts, the bank’s president, said in June that’s why they decided to sue.
“We can’t sell it. As a bank, the most important thing to do is sell it, and you have to sell it at a commercially reasonable amount,” he said then.
But Ditchfield and E&H claim the dry cleaner doesn’t have any responsibility to clean up the bank’s land, despite the fact that their own soil tests showed the house’s soil was contaminated.
That’s because most of their tests showed the soil’s contamination was higher than the Illinois EPA allows for groundwater. But because River Forest has a law specifically banning the use of groundwater, no one is being endangered, the dry cleaners’ lawyers wrote in their response.
“The village of River Forest desires to limit potential threats to human health from groundwater contamination, while facilitating the redevelopment and productive use of properties that are the source of [chemicals],” the 1999 ordinance said.
Because no one is allowed to use the potentially contaminated water, the dry cleaners said, there’s no imminent danger to the public, one of the requirements under one of the federal laws the bank sued under.
Forest Park National has a personal interest in the block’s welfare beyond the house, as well. It’s been slotted as the anchor business for a potential redevelopment on the site that the village of River Forest is pushing.
The village is on a tight timeline to get matters resolved and get the project rolling, though: The Lake Street TIF district expires at the end of this year, and the village has to commit money to the project by Dec. 31 in order to tap the funds.
CONTACT: bmeyerson@wjinc.com
