Minneapolis, Minnesota – A couple living in Inver Grove Heights, Minneapolis are happy to hear that the state will reimburse the money they spent cleaning up a bizarre discovery they made in their basement: chunks of a buried bridge.

John and Judy McEachran, who are both Methodist pastors, have spent the last four years battling to get the mess cleaned up, and to then find a way of paying the bills of almost $150,000.

Their four-year battle began in 2004, when the family hired a contractor to start digging the basement on the empty lot they had purchased in 1998. When the contractors began digging, they found enormous pieces of concrete buried in the soil. The concrete chunks turned out to be pieces of a buried bridge.

When the McEachrans purchased the land, they had no idea that it had once been part of a construction materials landfill. And an unregulated one, at that. At the time they purchased the lot, state law hadn’t required that the seller of the land disclose that information to buyers.

What initially looked like a small issue quickly turned into a huge one with a $150,000 price tag—when a Dakota County environmental inspector tested some of the debris found on the lot, the McEachrans were dismayed to learn that asbestos was present.

The county subsequently charged the McEachrans with ownership of an unlicensed hazardous waste dump and ordered them to clean up the site immediately.

While some City Council members showed some understanding and agreed that the McEachrans shouldn’t be liable for cleaning up the mess, the family still had plenty of problems.

Eventually, the city of Inver Grove Heights agreed to contribute $15,000 towards the cost of cleaning up the site. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency also contributed funds by providing the McEachrans with contractors for the job. However, the family still had to come up with $67,000. Dakota County assessed the bill against the property, to be paid over 30 years. The interest was enough to bring the total cost for the McEachrans back up to $150,000.

The family wanted to find out who was responsible for dumping the bridge there, and to find some way of getting reimbursement for the money they owed for the clean-up.

The McEachrans took their case to the Capitol and were happy to discover that lawmakers had their own doubts about whether the family should be responsible for paying for clean-up.

Eventually, it was discovered that the buried pieces had come from a bridge erected and owned by the Minnesota Department of Transport. The claims commission recommended that MNDOT pay the claim, and the McEachrans can now breathe much more easily: the asbestos is gone from their property, and they no longer have to worry about paying a $150,000 bill that should never have been theirs to begin with.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Minnesota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.