U.S. secures $1.37M settlement for cleanup of toxic south-side commercial property

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a $1.37 million settlement to help pay for environmental clean-up costs at a south-side Indianapolis property that had been soaked in hazardous waste for decades.

The 1.35-acre property at 2340 S. Tibbs Ave., known as the AA Oil Site, has been abandoned since 1993.

As part of the resolution announced this week, the defendants, Arconic Corp., Navistar Inc., and Ford Motor Co., agreed to pay the federal government the $457,000 each without admission of liability. The complaint alleged that the defendant companies (in the case of Arconic and Navistar, through their predecessor corporations) transported hazardous materials to the site, thus rendering them liable for past clean-up costs and any future remediation.

The Marion County Auditor took title to the property in 2016 through a property tax lien and transferred it to the Department of Metropolitan Development for a fee of $600. It was referred to the Environmental Protection Agency for cleanup after a review by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

In 2018, the EPA conducted a site cleanup to remove the hazardous substances and contaminated surface soil and analyze any imminent or substantial endangerment to the public health or the environment.

The site, which is across the street from Rolls-Royce Plant No. 5, contained six above-ground storage tanks and a 1,782-square-foot warehouse that was built in 1949.

AA Oil, a division of Cam-Or Inc., operated an oil-collection, storage and transfer facility at the site from the 1950s into the 1980s. AA Oil collected oil from garages, gas stations, oil-change facilities, auto dealers and trucking companies and stored it at the facility, the EPA said.

The waste oil was shipped from the local facility to the Westville Oil (later Cam-Or) facility in the northwest Indiana town of Westville, where oil was re-refined for use in automotive and industrial lubricating oil blends.

The Westville Cam-Or facility was named a Superfund site in 1987 and placed on the National Priorities List in 1998. Thirteen companies agreed to $14.4 million settlement over the Cam-Or site in 2010 to help pay for cleanup.

The Indianapolis site was acquired by Indy Investments Co. in 1990 and was operated from 1990 to 1993 by PWI Environmental, a hazardous materials/spill response contractor, then abandoned.

On Feb. 13, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Environment and Natural Resources Division sued the defendant companies pursuant to Section 107 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, a federal environmental remediation program that authorizes the United States to recover costs incurred in response to the release and threatened release of hazardous substances.

The complaint alleged that the site was contaminated by oil and other hazardous materials over past decades and, as a result, is contaminated with trichloroethylene, polychlorinated biphenyls, and other volatile organic compounds (benzene, toluene, and xylenes, among others) in soil, groundwater, and storage tanks.