Judge orders cleanup of business pollution that spread to homes

By Steve Green

Sunday, Jan. 2, 2011 | 5:36 p.m.

A judge has ordered five parties to clean up air, soil and water pollution from a dry cleaning business -- pollution believed to have spread some 4,000 feet to homes east of the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jones issued an injunction requiring the cleanup last week in a 2008 lawsuit filed by homeowners against entities involved with the old Maryland Square Shopping Center and the Al Phillips the Cleaners dry cleaning business that operated there from 1969 to 2000.

The homeowners complained in their suit that spills of the dry cleaning chemical tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene (PCE), from Al Phillips had contaminated groundwater and that the contaminated water had migrated east under Maryland Parkway and the Boulevard Mall to soil under their homes.

The defendants argued PCE contamination in the area "does not pose an imminent and substantial threat to human health and environment." But in a July ruling, Jones noted testimony from a plaintiffs' expert who said PCE in the groundwater had volatized into soil gas and that the PCE in the soil gas has migrated into the indoor air of homes above the contaminated groundwater.

"The court finds that contamination at the site poses an imminent and substantial risk of harm to health," Jones wrote in his July ruling, noting the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection had informed the court that it had already ordered that exhaust fans be placed in some of the homes to address the problem.

Last week's injunction was issued against Maryland Square LLC, Maryland Square Shopping Center Limited Liability Co., Herman Kishner, doing business as Maryland Square Shopping Center; trustees for the Herman Kishner Trust and Shapiro Brothers Investment Co. (successor to the bankrupt Al Phillips).

They're required, within two months, to submit to the state a work plan for mitigating threats to human health via the "vapor intrusion pathway."

Litigation over the pollution, however, is likely to continue for some time. Some of the defendants are appealing Jones' July 22 order granting summary judgment to the homeowners, which preceded last week's injunction ordering the cleanup.

A separate lawsuit is pending pitting the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection against the shopping center and Al Phillips defendants.

In that case, the shopping center defendants filed yet another complaint against the Al Phillips parties and some dry cleaning equipment manufacturers. The shopping center defendants said the Al Phillips parties accidentally spilled PCE on numerous occasions. The complaint said the manufactuers were partly responsible for the spills because their equipment allegedly was defective.

The shopping center defendants also sued several nearby businesses they claim may have contributed to the pollution with their own spills over the years.

Those defendants include the Sears Automotive Center or the Ted Wiens Automotive Center at the Boulevard Mall; a Dr. Clean dry cleaning store north of the Maryland Square site, Superior Tire and Goodyear, which allegedly operated near the mall; and Terrible Herbst Inc., which owned a service station at 4090 S. Maryland Parkway.