Environmental and Consumer Advocates Join Simon Family Trust in Demanding Cleanup of Toxic Honeywell Site

TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 13, 2005 -- A broad-based coalition of environmental, consumer and taxpayer groups today urged government regulators to "make Honeywell pay now" for a toxic waste site in Tampa that it created with poisonous pollutants more than two decades ago. Advocates from as far away as New Jersey documented the corporate giant's "callous path of indifference" and said Honeywell's track record "represents a dangerous pattern of dodging responsibility and delaying cleanups" at many of the more than 150 pollution sites it created nationwide.

The diverse groups said they came together to shine a spotlight on Honeywell International Inc. because, even when it is under orders by government regulators, the company has a history of failing to clean sites it contaminated decades ago.

"It's not for lack of trying," said Walter Dartland, of the Consumer Federation of the Southeast. "Regulators and landowners have been fighting with Honeywell sometimes for decades to get action on these sites."

Today, the group focused attention on land owned by the Simon Family Trust, whose property was contaminated a quarter of a century ago, making it the most egregious current Florida toxic site on a national map of Honeywell environmental destruction.

David Simon, a representative of the Simon Family Trust, noted that despite a state order from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the threat of a lawsuit by the Hillsborough County Commission, and nearly a decade of his own efforts, Honeywell filed yet another delay request on Nov. 18th to further avoid cleanup of the Waters and Himes avenues property, which Honeywell contaminated in the 1970s.

Honeywell was caught polluting the Tampa property in 1982. Honeywell contaminated the ground water, drinking water, a lake and soils with a range of toxic substances, including methylene chloride, trichloroethene and lead. At the time, Honeywell operated a circuit board manufacturing plant at the Waters Avenue site. Based in Morris Township, N.J., Honeywell International is a $26 billion diversified technology and manufacturing company with customers worldwide. It produces aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; and specialty materials.

Honeywell leased the site from the Simon Family Trust in 1971 and systematically concealed its pollution from the owners and regulators for years. In 1982, the State of Florida learned of the pollution, and Honeywell signed a consent agreement to clean the site in 1986. Documents show that during the 1980s, the company posed as the property's owner to the state, thus keeping the Simon family in the dark.

Another Honeywell document, a decision-making matrix, identifies a Honeywell cost-benefit analysis used to conceal pollution at the site and delay its cleanup indefinitely.

The Simon family only learned of the site's pollution in 1996 after a local official contacted them about a water permit.

Nearly a decade later, legal efforts, mediation talks and cleanup orders issued by the Florida DEP all have failed to force Honeywell to begin cleaning the property.

"So far, Honeywell has not cleaned a grain of soil from that building, an ounce of water from the lake or a teaspoon of sediment from the bottom," Simon said. "From the moment my family became aware of this problem, Honeywell has repeatedly done the same thing. Each time we make a request, they delay and then they turn around and blame us for their lack of progress."

On Oct. 21 of this year, FDEP ordered Honeywell to use a thermal process to clean groundwater at three contaminated sites under the plant. The process involves heating groundwater until volatile pollutants gasify and are removed -- a technology investigated and championed for years by Simon as the only way to clean the property.

Honeywell's motion filed late Nov. 18 in Tallahassee will delay the cleanup further, possibly for months or several more years. Honeywell is claiming the technology proposed for cleaning up the contaminated ground water is untested, in spite of the fact that thermal heating has a proven history for working on similar sites with similar levels of contamination.

Moreover, the company is objecting to DEP's order to clean up concentrated heavy metal sediment in a former borrow pit called Gold Lake using a method known as hydraulic dredging. Honeywell initially proposed to do so but is now attempting to retreat on its commitment. The technology uses a vacuum pump to suck up contaminated sediments, and it is the only way to effectively and thoroughly remove the many tons of heavy metals befouling the pond.

But after a generation of delays, Honeywell's position may no longer be tenable. The Hillsborough County Environmental Commission recently voted to intervene in the anticipated administrative court hearing triggered by Honeywell's Nov. 18 challenge of the Oct. 21 cleanup order issued by the FDEP.

The Simon Family Trust also intends to intervene and to work with DEP and the county in resisting Honeywell's latest tactic to delay even further the cleanup of its mess.

"Honeywell should be ashamed of itself, and they're not going to get away with their delaying tactics this time," Simon said. "Honeywell has squandered its good will in this community, and the eyes of the press, the County Commission, of all of us, are going to be watching them. We want the community clean again."

The Tampa site is only one of dozens of similar toxic waste dumps produced by Honeywell across Florida and the rest of the country. In several cases, Honeywell has befouled land it has leased, blamed property owners for delays in cleaning up the pollution, and filed court challenges to delay cleanup of the sites indefinitely.

One prominent example is a site in Jersey City, New Jersey. The New Jersey government first ordered cleanup of the site in 1982, but little was done other than temporary stopgap measures to limit the toxic waste's seepage into the Hackensack River.

In 1995, a community organization known as the Interfaith Community Organization sued Honeywell's predecessor, AlliedSignal, alleging the site was an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to public health.

Honeywell lost a bench trial in district court and was ordered to clean the site. They immediately challenged the order, drawing out the legal process until February 2005, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled for the plaintiffs.

"In New Jersey, Honeywell and its predecessors created one of the worst hazardous waste disasters in the United States," said the Rev. Dr. Willard Ashley, co-chairman of the Jersey City-based Interfaith Community Organization. "They dumped millions of tons of cancer causing chromium waste throughout a densely populated urban area, and then refused to clean it up for decades. Honeywell tried to do everything but the right thing.

"Now we're learning that Jersey City isn't the only victim of an environmental hit-and-run by Honeywell. They are dodging cleanup responsibilities from Tampa to New York."

The New Jersey group and the Simon family, joined by a Florida consumer group have begun exploring how they can help affected citizens organize and bring greater public attention to Honeywell's tactics and delays -- and the enormous cost to the public.

Together, they called today upon Honeywell to immediately drop its newest challenge to the DEP's cleanup orders and to immediately and publicly commit to cleaning up this property in the New Year.