Port St. Joe homeowners to protest at St. Joe - Jacksonville Business Journal:
Property owners in a Panhandle community built on land formerly owned by the predecessor of the St. Joe Co. say they will protest in front of the company’s headquarters at its annual shareholders meeting Tuesday to demand a fair settlement.
Families living in seven homes on Bay Street in the Mill View community in Port St. Joe say the company deceived them when it sold them wetlands lots that are now sinking and breaking apart, rendering them unsafe and uninhabitable, according to a news release announcing the event.
The St. Joe Paper Co. began paper mill operations in Port St. Joe in the late 1930s and over the next few decades filled a wetlands area west of the paper mill with paper mill waste that included tree bark, boiler ash, lime grit and slag. In the mid-1950s the company created the 100-acre Mill View subdivision on top of some of the filled area. The community originally housed mill workers.
In 1990 the Florida Department of Environmental Protection found the first evidence of contamination in areas around the paper mill in groundwater traces of arsenic and solvents beneath the nearby Apalachicola Northern Railroad property.
The agency began testing the Mill View subdivision in 2001, according to a report from the state, finding levels of chemicals measured in the soil, surface water, sediments and groundwater were “no apparent public health hazard.” Arsenic was present in the soil in amounts slightly higher than the federal guidelines. However, the amount was still well below the amount likely to cause illness.
Some Mill View houses built on mill waste are settling, and, as a result, the structure of homes can be damaged, according to the Department of Health report.
According to the Port St. Joe newspaper, The Star, a class action suit filed in Gulf County Circuit Court in 2004 includes more than 300 plaintiffs who are current and former residents of the community and roughly 400 pieces of property.
Jacksonville-based St. Joe (NYSE: Joe) is a real estate development company primarily engaged in real estate development and sales, with significant interests in timber. Much of the company’s land and development plans are in Northwest Florida. St. Joe spokesman Jerry Ray said the plaintiffs purchased the lots from the St. Joe Paper Co. between 1985 and 1988, before its transformation into a real estate company. St. Joe had no involvement with the construction on the property during the late 1980s and early ‘90s, nor the contractor selection. In 2000 one of the plaintiffs noticed settlement damage to his home and made an insurance claim that was denied. Ray said engineers have tested the soil below each home in the neighborhood and concluded that it was suitable soil, noting that instead the foundation of the homes were not built according to the then prevailing building code and that the improper construction is causing the settlement of the homes.
“The
St. Joe Paper Company sold land that was suitable for homes assuming that the homes were properly constructed and met prevailing code requirements,” Ray said in an emailed statement. “We regret that the home foundations are failing. A foundation improperly built without meeting minimum code requirements has a higher risk of failure regardless of the land on which it was constructed.”
