The mayor and aldermen today accepted $725,000 to settle a long-running lawsuit Natchez filed against an Illinois-based tire company that leased the city’s tire plant, allegedly polluted the area and reneged on paying rent.
Mayor Dan Gibson and Natchez aldermen closed the public out of discussions about this and emerged to disclose few details about it. They agreed to “accept that amount to resolve the litigation” and “to wrap this up,” city attorney Bryan Callaway said in open session.
After the meeting, Callaway said the $725,000 being paid to the city settles the lawsuit Natchez filed against Titan Tire Corp in 2017.
“The settlement had to be approved in the minutes (by the Board of Aldermen), but the terms, other than the amount, are confidential as part of the settlement. I hesitate to say anything else, other than I am not aware of any restrictions on spending the settlement funds,” Callaway said.
Gibson said no decisions have been made on how to spend the $725,000 – a sizable amount for a city budget that totals about $50 million for the current fiscal year that began last month.
In the lawsuit, Natchez accused Titan of causing “hazardous environmental conditions” at the north Natchez site and failing to pay rent after it ceased operations in 2001 but continued to lease the property until 2017. Titan allegedly owed the city about $650,000 in overdue rent, with that amount deducted by the property taxes the company paid the city from 1999 to 2009.
“In addition, and during it’s almost 20 years of occupying the (property), Titan, through its tire manufacturing operations, polluted the environment and contaminated the groundwater and surface water of the property on which the (factory) was located, and failed or otherwise refused to properly remediate,” states the lawsuit filed six years ago in Adams County Circuit Court when Darryl Grennell was mayor.
The lawsuit asked the court to order Titan to pay the city an unspecified amount of money for the company’s “bad faith, malicious conduct, intentional fraud and wanton or reckless disregard for the safety of others.”
City officials also wanted the court to force Titan to actually assume ownership of the old, blighted tire factory, which is a major environmental and financial albatross that Gibson last month called “a vacant monster” burdening the city.
The mayor and aldermen have been trying to sell the old tire plant riddled with asbestos and contaminated groundwater with hopes it can be rehabilitated.
An unnamed food processor that the mayor dubbed a “green industry” has expressed interest in cleaning up the 84-year-old plant, retrofitting it to produce food with medicinal benefits and employing at least 50 people.
However, skeptics have said the facility is unfeasible for any new industry, with its pockets of contaminated groundwater still there from the tire plant’s operations and the cancer-causing asbestos embedded in its long-vacant buildings. The 84-year-old factory occupies a large city block on Kelly Avenue in north Natchez and once employed more than 1,000 people.
The contamination there has been monitored for years by state and federal environmental regulators. Natchez-Adams County officials have been using federal funds to analyze the pollution and determine costs for revamping the blighted property.
It needs to come down. State of Mississippi should pay for craziness in putting our public fisc at risk by having a Muny own an environmental disaster. Got to be federal funds and foundations grant money help out there to get this done. Also, any monies for light pollution in form of illuminated bridge should go into the pot.