Coconut Grove's 'Old Smokey' Lawsuit

The Downs Law Group has partnered with Louise Caro at Caro Law, P.A. to represent potential class members against the City of Miami (“the City) and Schmidt Consulting Engineers, Inc. (“SCS”).  In 2017 a Class Action Lawsuit was filed in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit: Yvette Styles, et al. v. City of Miami and Schmidt Consulting Engineers, Inc. (“SCS”) (Case No. 17-22967). 

The gravamen of the Class Action is to hold the City and SCS responsible for damage caused by the solid waste incinerator operated at 3425 Jefferson Street (commonly referred to as “Old Smokey”) from 1926 through 1970.

In the 1920s, the City of Miami built an incinerator in the middle of the Jim Crow segregated West Grove. This neighborhood consisted (and still consists) of residential houses, schools, and churches. “Old Smokey” (the moniker for the incinerator) rained ash, soot, and stench upon the community and particularly on the surrounding one-mile radius.

The West Grove residents’ complaints and requests to the City for Old Smokey to be shut down were ignored until the City of Coral Gables, a predominately white neighborhood, filed a nuisance claim against the City of Miami. In 1970 the Court ordered the City to shut Old Smokey down. At that time, the City took no action to remediate the contamination it created from the operation of Old Smokey.

Ultimately, the incinerator was demolished in 1974, and the site was left dormant until 1979 when the City repurposed a portion of the site for its Fire Rescue Training Center. In 1983, the City allowed the Barnyard Community Center to be built on a portion of the site. In 2011, the City sought a permit to expand the Fire Training facility and was required (by newly enacted legislation) to perform an environmental assessment (“ESA”). The 2011 ESA report, along with further testing, revealed concentrations of arsenic, barium, benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), cadmium, and lead that exceeded safe exposure thresholds for residential areas and SCTL criteria.

As alleged in the class action complaint against the City of Miami, despite DERM requiring the remediation of the Old Smokey site in 2011, the City did not commence remediation until 2015. The City contracted with SCS Engineers in 2015 to remediate the Old Smokey site as well as Armbrister, Blanche, Billie Rolle, Merrie Christmas, and Douglas Parks. However, they failed to perform offsite sampling (and remediation) of parks, schools, and streets (Rights of Way) in the adjacent areas. When a sampling from these offsite areas was later conducted in 2016, levels of arsenic, barium, copper, lead and benzo(a)pyrene equivalents were found to exceed SCTL residential criteria. From 2016 through 2020, DERM has sampled Rights of Ways and has continued to find contamination. DERM has continued to put the City on notice of its need to repair past remediation efforts by SCS and to continue to remediate properties in the affected area.

As further alleged in the complaint, notwithstanding having detailed knowledge of the contaminants created by Old Smokey and being in possession of testing results confirming the existence of toxic chemicals in the soil, the City has failed to warn West Grove property owners and residents about the likely contamination of the soil, has not recommend that the residential soil be tested, and has allowed the property owners and nearby residents to be continuously exposed to the contamination in the soil through the air, groundwater and other means of discharge.