Landfillville: Lawsuit documents another residential dumping ground in Gulf Breeze

Adron Broxson was a pioneer in the South Santa Rosa sanitation business.

Unfortunately, in 1952 when Broxson got his start, the Gulf Breeze area was sparsely populated and garbage collection was not regulated the way it is today. Broxson Sanitation, as his company was originally known, apparently disregarded what few rules it was instructed to abide by.

The result was a landfill site Broxson called Midway Sanitation that had a state permit for the disposal of construction debris and old tires and became a dumping ground for household trash, 55-gallon drums filled with "unknown liquids," house shingles that may have contained asbestos and decrepit vehicles with their old fuel tanks and transmissions.

Tests for contaminants in the groundwater on Broxson's land and an adjoining property, conducted in 2005 by a company called Mallard Inc., found benzene, metals, ammonia nitrogen and total dissolved solids that exceeded state standards.

Today DEP lists the closed waste treatment facility site of Midway Sanitation at 4729 Gulf Breeze Highway. It's in a developing area not far from where, in 2019, Abbey and Jeff Rodamaker discovered they had purchased six acres on top of another landfill site.

Though its tests were later called into question during a contentious legal battle, at the time it concluded its report, Mallard Inc. called for excavation, remediation and monitoring of the groundwater at the Midway Sanitation site.

"Due to this site being located in a residential area, and with the water table being high in normal conditions, Mallard recommends that the buried garbage be excavated, removed and properly disposed of to inhibit future impacts to the groundwater," it said. "Furthermore, due to private drinking water wells located within a quarter mile surrounding the site, a groundwater monitoring schedule should be implemented."

The DEP record appears to clarify that the groundwater testing called for was never undertaken, and it is unclear whether a full scale clean up of the site was done. The owner of the two parcels that comprise the property is East Gulf Breeze Holdings LLC. Pensacola resident Charles McGrath, the business's primary managing partner, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Documentation on what was discovered on the site when Mallard Inc. was sent in to survey it, along with a great deal of the history of the property itself, are found in a lawsuit McGrath and a business partner, Benjamin Bates, filed in 2004 against the estate of Adron Broxson and his wife, Mary. Also brought in as a defendant in the case was Wrights Collection Florida, which in 2005 bought the Broxson property.

The basic premise of the McGrath/Bates lawsuit was that contaminated groundwater from the former Broxson property was draining onto, and thereby "trespassing" onto, the McGrath/Bates property.

It claimed the contaminated water's presence on the McGrath/Bates property to be a clear breach of the law even though as much or more of the trash collected by Broxson had originally been deposited on the property owned by McGrath and Bates when it was then owned by Cleveland Bates.

More: School board withdraws request for new school on U.S. 98, citing 'infeasible conditions'

Cleveland Bates was an employee of Santa Rosa County, documents found within the lawsuit state. He had inked a deal with Broxson and some other collectors of household waste to dump their garbage on his land, and once a month or so got a county work crew to come in and cover over the freshly deposited trash.

Mallard Inc. was called in to assess the levels of contamination on the property owned by Mallard and Bates following Hurricane Ivan.

The team found that while Broxson had obtained permits for a construction debris landfill, he had obviously comingled what he was legally able to dump with household trash he was not. In 1960, Santa Rosa County provided Broxson with a franchise to collect and do away with residential garbage.

"Approximately 99% of the garbage/waste located on the McGrath/Bates property was placed on the property by Midway Sanitation Services," Mallard found.

Along with the liquid contaminants, possible asbestos and vehicle parts Mallard found on the properties they surveyed, Mallard also found a manmade pond in between what had historically been the Bates and Broxson properties.

The pond "exhibited an odor very similar to sewage," the report said, and was filled with "greenish-black water with what appeared to be an oil-based film on top."

The group even discovered a Broxson Sanitation garbage truck still filled with bagged trash.

"The area of probable contamination on the McGrath/Bates property is one and the same as the area permitted by FDEP to Midway Sanitation Service," the report said. "It is clear that surface water is draining off the Broxson's property onto McGrath/Bates property."

McGrath and Bates had filed their lawsuit seeking damages in excess of $15,000. The Mallard Inc. report estimated the cost of remediation of the property at $1.57 million.

The case was settled in September of 2007 for $25,000. A month later Wrights Collection Florida, which had paid $350,000 for the Broxson land, sold it to East Gulf Breeze Holdings for $35,000.

Santa Rosa County Planning Director Shawn Ward said that county staff is unfamiliar with the property at 2749 Gulf Breeze Highway and no plans for development have been submitted to the county by East Gulf Breeze Holdings LLC.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa lawsuit unveils a landfill and illegal dumping