Innsbrook residents, Merrillville, still disagreeing about pond

• Reprints

Al Borom, left, and Dan King stand near a pond behind their homes in Merrillville Friday Jan. 27, 2012. The men were among a group of residents who had waged a six-year legal battle with the city to clean the pond and take measures to control the mosquito population. | Andy Lavalley~Sun-Times Media

Updated: January 28, 2012 2:02AM

MERRILLVILLE — Two residents of the Innsbrook subdivision say they want to end a six-year-old legal battle with the town over maintenance of a retention pond behind their homes, which has yet to be settled and which has resulted in their neighbors not getting their street plowed during the recent snow.

The residents are hoping to reach a more amicable solution. But it may not be that easy.

Attorney Elizabeth Norwood, who represented about 14 Innsbrook property owners, said Friday a lawsuit filed by the homeowners against the town and developer Ross Innsbrook Development had been dismissed in Lake Superior Court in Hammond in December 2010, with the court ruling in favor of the town. She said the town is now countersuing to recoup its legal costs.

The lawsuit, filed in 2007, claimed town officials and the developer failed to solve existing drainage problems and conspired to sell defective homes to blacks.

Council president Shawn Pettit, D-6th, said the matter is in pending litigation and he hasn’t received clearance from the town’s insurance attorney to say anything about the matter. He did say, however, that only two of the people named in the lawsuit attended Tuesday’s town council meeting.

“There’s no documentation to prove they’re speaking for all the residents in the suit,” Pettit said

Ben King and Al Borom, both residents of the 2700 block of 65th Avenue, said they were seeking a diplomatic, rather than litigious, way of getting someone to maintain the retention pond, which they say is mosquito-infested and filled with muck. They say the pond is now only about 11/2 feet deep.

They also said they don’t want their neighbors in a different unit of the subdivision to suffer as a result of the lawsuit when those neighbors have nothing to do with it.

King said he hopes the town will just drop the lawsuit and take care of his neighbors’ streets.

Councilman Donald Spann, D-1st, said the last leg of the development hasn’t been accepted by the town as yet due to the pending litigation and it is up to the developer to plow those streets until it does becomes part of the town.

Spann said the pond is the developer’s responsibility, that the town never accepted it as part of its property.

The original developer has died. The office of Ross Innsbrook Development could not be reached for comment.

King said when he purchased his house 10 years ago the developer told him the retention pond would eventually be enhanced and made more attractive, but the developer never fulfilled his promise.

King said he brought the matter to the town’s attention in 2004. He said Public Works director Bruce Spires brought crews out a few times to clear up the area, but eventually told him they couldn’t continue as it was up to the developer.

He said a former councilman had an aerator put in, but it no longer works.

During the last six years, as the developer built more houses in the subdivision, clay and debris made its way into the pond, making it even more shallow, King said.

King said it was always a matter of the developer and town saying it was the other entity’s responsibility to take care of the pond.

He said the homeowners’ lawsuit against the town and developer was never about money, but about resolving the pond issue.