The West Grove property owner says the City of Miami should be held accountable for years of neighborhood contamination spread by the city’s former Old Smokey trash incinerator and its Fire Training Rescue Center.
The owners of Kingsway Apartments in the West Grove have returned to court to sue the City of Miami over what they claim is decades of exposure to harmful chemicals from the city’s former Old Smokey trash incinerator and its Fire Rescue Training Center.
The owners first sued the city in federal court last September, alleging a violation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), but the case was dismissed May 15 due to an unclear presentation of alleged damages.
The West Grove property owners – Community Developers Ltd. – are now trying their luck in the state court system, refiling their complaint on Aug. 5.
“Our goal is to ensure transparency, justice, and a meaningful cleanup. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we look forward to bringing these claims fully into the light,” Bercow Radell Fernandez Larkin & Tapanes, the Miami law firm representing Community Developers, said in a statement to the Spotlight.
Old Smokey has cast a pall over the West Grove since it first opened in 1925. For the 45 years it was in operation, the incinerator spewed an estimated ton of smoke and ash over the neighborhood every day and left behind a layer of toxic byproduct in the soil of nearby parks, playgrounds and backyards.
The legacy of that contamination has stoked health concerns for years and led to multiple lawsuits, including a potential class action lawsuit that demands accountability and financial compensation for residents who were exposed to toxic chemicals.
Now in its eighth year of litigation, the lawsuit brought on behalf of residents against the City of Miami focuses on the contaminants left in the soil of nearby properties following Old Smokey’s closure in 1970. These include dioxins, arsenic, barium and lead, known for causing a myriad of illnesses such as cancer.
The Kingsway suit adds another dimension, focusing on the potential exposure to PFAS, a broad category of synthetic chemicals, found in the firefighting foam used to put out liquid fires that don’t respond to water.
The foam has been used regularly in training exercises at the facility, which was built on the site of the former incinerator in 1981, and has been linked to a plethora of negative health effects.
On May 26, 2020, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection informed the city that PFOS and PFOA, chemicals under the PFAS umbrella, exceeded safe levels in the soil, sediment and groundwater of the training academy and had likely been released into the wider environment.
According to the lawsuit, the city failed to share this information with the property owners or general public despite the possible health risks.
The lawsuit claims through several independent studies that Kingsway Apartments, which occupy a 222,000-square-foot lot abutting the fire training center, were exposed to the harmful chemicals, continuing a 100-year saga of pollution in the West Grove.
“Despite numerous orders from the County’s environmental regulators to clean up the pollution, the City has chosen not to. Community Developers, Ltd., which is the abutting property owner and a long-term stakeholder in Coconut Grove, seeks accountability through this lawsuit for the clear, well-documented harm that the City has caused to the environment,” the lawyers for Community Developers said in their statement.
The case has been assigned to Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Daryl Trawick.
The City of Miami did not respond to a request for comment.
