EAST ST. LOUIS - Citizens of Cahokia Heights who sued for decent sewers can intervene in a suit that state and national environmental agencies brought for the same purpose, U.S. District Judge David Dugan ruled on April 28.
He found no threat that the intervention by Centreville Citizens for Change would cause undue delay or prejudice to the agencies or Cahokia Heights.
He granted the group opportunities to respond to a proposed consent decree between the agencies and the city and to participate in any hearing on the proposed decree.
He ruled that if necessary the group can appeal his ruling on entry of a decree.
Centreville Citizens for Change filed its suit in 2021, before Centreville, Cahokia and Alorton merged to form Cahokia Heights.
The group claimed flooding spread raw sewage on yards and streets and in homes.
Group members Earlie Fuse and Cornelius Bennett had filed a similar suit in 2020.
In January 2024 Dugan stayed both cases pending negotiation of a consent decree.
Last December the agencies sued the city and filed a proposed consent decree that called for the city to pay for all improvements.
Centreville Citizens for Change moved for intervention and the agencies opposed it.
Dugan found the group showed standing as intervenor plaintiffs “from the unlawful sewage pollution around their homes and to the Mississippi River and its tributaries.”
He found they alleged that a lack of maintenance to canals and ditches exacerbated the flooding and raw sewage; they no longer fished and ate catch from Grand Marais Lake; they no longer enjoyed the outdoors or gardening and that they alleged that foundations of homes shifted and needed repairs.
On the day Dugan signed the order Bennett and Fuse asked him to order the agencies to submit a status report.
Their counsel Kennedy Gardner of Belleville wrote that when Dugan stayed their case he ordered the agencies and the city to file reports no less than every 90 days.
“Over 200 days have passed since the last status report," she wrote.
“In that time sanitary sewer overflows have continued to plague plaintiff Centreville Citizens for Change and the individual plaintiffs.
“Stormwater also has flooded the community.”
She wrote that initiation of a proceeding and lodging of a proposed decree didn’t reduce the importance of status reports.
“The draft shows that the city has not secured or planned for all of the funds that will be necessary to complete the long term solutions that it contemplates," she wrote.
She asked Dugan to require a report in two weeks.
He immediately did better than that, setting a deadline on May 5.
Gardner represents plaintiffs in association with Nicole Nelson and Kalila Jackson of Belleville.