WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin sounded an alarm for Centreville on July 28, calling for federal intervention to clean its water and fix its sewers.
“The issues plaguing this community require immediate action,” they wrote in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago.
Duckworth met residents in Centreville on July 16.
In the letter to the EPA, she and Durbin wrote that she witnessed deplorable conditions and heard heartbreaking stories.
The senators asked regional EPA administrator Kurt Thiede to investigate regional solutions and enforce environmental laws.
They asked for “investigation into the condition of the drinking water distribution system allegedly serving Centreville.”
“Residents in this community check their yards daily for raw sewage and drink only bottled water due to concerns that their sewage backups may have contaminated their drinking water supply,” they wrote.
Barely functioning pump stations and crumbling pipes caused the problem, and even light rain overwhelms ditches that have needed attention and maintenance for decades, they wrote.
They further wrote that Illinois EPA has been largely absent, though it took action against Commonfields that resulted in improvements in Belleville.
“It has been brought to our attention that constituents in East St. Louis and Cahokia have similar issues that have gone long unaddressed,” they wrote.
East St. Louis and Cahokia systems directly connect to Centreville, “likely causing or aggravating Centreville’s problems,” they wrote.
In June, residents Cornelius Bennett and Earlie Fuse sued the city, the township, and Commonfields of Cahokia water district at U.S. district court.
They sought court authority over township supervisor Curtis McCall Sr., mayor Mark Jackson, and Commonfields superintendent Dennis Traiteur.
Their lawyer Nicole Nelson of Belleville alleged in the suit that “these conditions occur due to a string of collective decisions not to invest in a community.”
She wrote that Bennett and Fuse requested substantive resolution because damages were insufficient.
“Plaintiffs can no longer sustain the physical, mental, and financial burdens of these dysfunctional sewer and storm water systems and the rainy days which further exacerbate current terrible and unhealthy conditions,” she wrote.
McCall and Traiteur retained Mark Scroggins of Columbia, who answered the complaint on July 24.
“Defendants admit that there have been some overflows and storm water flooding to some residences of Centreville for many decades not just during the tenure of the defendants,” Scroggins wrote.
“Further, the defendants deny that the plaintiffs are a microcosm of a much larger broken system.”
He admitted that the infrastructure is severely underfunded.
He admitted that plaintiffs might have experienced some tribulation, but he demanded strict proof to the extent that they categorized it as suffering.
He wrote that McCall admitted there have been lift station repairs that solved some but not all the problems.
Centreville retained Blake Meinders of Belleville, who answered on the same date.
He wrote that the cause of action conflicted with previous claims or actions of Bennett and Fuse.
He wrote that it violated the applicable statute of limitations and that plaintiffs delayed unreasonably in making the claim.
Magistrate Judge Mark Beatty presides.