Dredging suit dropped but not dead

 Saturday, October 01, 2005

 ERIN ALBERTY THE SAGINAW NEWS

The contract is out and lawsuits dropped in a plan to dredge the Saginaw River.

For now.

Within a day of a major funding deadline, Zilwaukee Township and Frankenlust Township in Bay County agreed to dismiss lawsuits that officials in Saginaw County say could have jeopardized the $5 million project -- and 280 jobs linked to river traffic the dredging is intended to protect.

The lawsuits attacked county plans to build a 3.1 million cubic-yard storage pool for the dredged river spoils. The dump site would overlap the two townships.

Frankenlust Township sued in Bay Count Circuit Court about two weeks ago, claiming the facility would violate the site's current wetlands zoning.

Zilwaukee Township Clerk Patricia Bradt followed with a similar suit Thursday in Saginaw County Circuit Court, filing requests for a restraining order and an injunction against the county on behalf of the township.

Frankenlust Township agreed Thursday to dismiss its suit without prejudice, which means it still stands behind the case and may refile the suit later.

James Hammond, attorney for Frankenlust Township, said the township did not want liability for the $3.3 million in project funding the county said it would lose if the lawsuit remained in place until Friday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is managing the dredging itself, would not award contracts on a project as long as lawsuits were pending against it, county officials reported. However, federal funding for the project would expire Friday, the last day of the fiscal year.

If the funding were to evaporate because of the township's lawsuit, and the township later lost its case, the county could sue the township for the amount of the funding, Hammond said.

"We still have a firm conviction in our legal position," Hammond said. "But we could always be wrong, and we dont want to be liable ... for damages."

Hammond said he likely will resubmit the case next week. Frankenlust Township Trustees already have authorized him to refile after the Corps awarded the contract and secured funding.

The county challenged Bradt's lawsuit in court, claiming Bradt, not a licensed attorney, may not file lawsuit on behalf of her township. In an emergency hearing Friday morning, county attorneys noted Zilwaukee Township's lawsuit, like that filed by Frankenlust Township, exposed Zilwaukee Township to liability for lost funding.

"Saginaw County was threatening the township and myself personally for $3.3 million," Bradt said. "I didn't want to have the township bear that cost, nor myself as individual."

However, the Corps awarded the contract Thursday night in spite of Bradt's pending lawsuit and may not have known about the case, said Saginaw County Public Works Commissioner James A. Koski.

Also on hold is an appeal against environmental permits the state issued for the site. The townships had planned to argue before a state administrative judge that the Department of Environmental Quality had not sufficiently assessed the environmental risks of storing sediment from a river known to contain high levels of dioxin.

The state administrative court had scheduled a teleconference hearing for this month. However, state judge today agreed to postpone all deadlines in the case and use the teleconference this month to reschedule the hearing.

Hammond said Frankenlust Township is discussing its environmental safety concerns with the county and requested the delay along with the county to allow for further negotiations out of court.

It is the second delay for the DEQ hearings, which originally were set for September. Bradt said attorneys for the county and Frankenlust Township decided in private sessions to request the state postpone them again. She said Zilwaukee Township, which has no attorney, was excluded from the decision to postpone.

"They kept us out of the loop," she said. v

Erin Alberty is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You may reach her at 776-9673.

 

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