FORT WAYNE – which ignited a battle as long-lasting and toxic as the hazardous waste dumped into it – is up for permit renewal.

The hazardous-waste landfill closed in 1998 and, after years of review and revision with state regulators, was issued a post-closure permit in 2005.

That five-year permit is up for renewal, but no one expects much controversy, certainly nothing approaching the fight that raged for more than a decade over the dump at 4636 Adams Center Road.

“There’s a long history with the site, but what decisions were made have been made and we’re just going through the next process,” said Lisa Disbrow, spokeswoman for Chemical Waste Management of Indiana, the landfill’s owner.

The landfill was so controversial that there was almost no aspect of the debate that was not litigated in court. At least one of the lawsuits was over another lawsuit; the last of the cases were settled four years after the landfill closed, and even that sparked legal action.

“The central theme of it was we’re tired of being dumped on,” said Tom Lewandowski, a New Haven city councilman during the fight.

The landfill, in an area between Fort Wayne and New Haven that was unincorporated at the time, opened as a municipal landfill in 1974, before environmental laws governing hazardous waste existed.

Residents’ anger really grew as the landfill received a hazardous-waste permit in 1988, but were galvanized in 1991 when Chem Waste announced plans to expand onto 200 acres east of Adams Center Road.

Today, the landfill property is part of the city of Fort Wayne in an area ripe for development after the Maplecrest Road extension, creating a major north-south corridor on the east side of the city, is complete. In fact, a major part of the settlement of the lawsuits was that hundreds of acres of Chem Waste-owned land would be donated for future development.

Lewandowski said one enduring legacy of the landfill – and proof of its effect on surrounding land – is that the promised development hasn’t happened, even almost a decade after the settlement.

“Look at the results,” he said. “It’s still a dead zone.”

Whether the settlement was a good one remains almost irrelevant to some: Cheryl Hitzemann, who was president of a citizens group called Dump Stoppers, said those who fought hardest and paid the highest personal costs were left out of the negotiations, which still stings.

In particular, Hitzemann said, residents who lived closest to the site could have taken buyouts from Chem Waste but did not because the impact on their property was the basis for New Haven’s lawsuit.

“Standing was a big issue and whether New Haven had standing to sue,” especially since the landfill was outside of New Haven’s boundaries, Hitzemann said. “They didn’t take the buyout and then they were absolutely excluded from the negotiations.”

The fight had gone on so long – the first lawsuit was filed in 1991 – that leadership in both Fort Wayne and New Haven had changed, and officials were ready to move on.

Lewandowski was the sole New Haven city councilman to vote against the settlement.

“The citizens should have been more involved (in the settlement), and there should have been more reparations for the damages done there,” Lewandowski said. “The citizens who drove (the fight) weren’t positively rewarded. They were rewarded since we stopped the thing, but they weren’t repaid for their effort and energy.”

There was another reward, though, something less tangible: Identity.

“To think that had the citizens not come together like this, we’d have a no-man’s land stretching for miles into east Allen County, I think New Haven got a sense of itself that it didn’t have before,” Lewandowski said. “It created an identity, a positive identity.”

Today, there is little worry about the landfill itself, even as Chem Waste asks for its new permit to cover 10 years rather than just five.

“(The change) really doesn’t mean that much,” Dump Stoppers’ Hitzemann said. “There are things that have to be monitored.”

Most of the permit deals with monitoring the dump to ensure it is not leaking or damaged and how the leachate is handled. Leachate is the liquid that collects inside the landfill from rain passing through it; Chem Waste collects and removes about 1,250 tons of leachate a year, which is treated and disposed of offsite.

As part of the permit process, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is accepting written comments on the draft permit until July 5.

Chem Waste’s Disbrow said the company will fulfill its commitment to ensure the hazardous wastes buried there will not enter the environment.

“We are maintaining the site and monitoring the site as the post-closure care regulations require, and we will continue to do so,” Disbrow said.

dstockman@jg.net