Columbia Heights couple files $36.7 million suit against state, federal environmental agencies

Lucas and Leslie Sterling of Columbia Heights are suing the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for $36.7 million, claiming both agencies failed to inform them that their home off Berne Road was located on a contaminated state Superfund site.

The Sterling’s Columbia Heights home is located on the former Beaver Wood Products site, which used a variety of toxic chemicals, including dioxins and furans from the 1940s to the 1990s. In 2000, the site was treated for pentachlorophenol, but only to industrial standards, the Sterlings assert, and should never have become residential property.

The treatment, according to a story in the Hungry Horse News in September 2000, cost about $2 million as the pentachlorophenol, which is used to treat wood fenceposts to keep them from rotting, was rapidly sinking toward the groundwater supply.

That treatment involved spreading contaminated dirt on the surface and then using fertilizers, fungus and bacteria to break down the pentachlorophenol, which is also known as PCP, into inert substances. But the EPA at the time conceded the process might not work for dioxins, and dioxins, a known carcinogen and poison, still persist at the site today, according to EPA testing.

Leslie Sterling in an interview on Monday said the family has health problems. She has chronic urticaria, a form of severe hives. Lucas Sterling previously became ill whenever he cut the lawn, so much so that he claims he lost about 40 pounds at one point.

They still live in the home. They have no place else to live. They have to buy drinking water.

“But we still have to bathe in [tap water],” Leslie said.

According to court documents, the Sterlings had hopes of making the property into an RV Park with vacation cabins. Those hopes are dashed as well.

The couple filed the suit on their own, without an attorney, Leslie Sterling said, because they were running out of time to make a claim and they had problems with previous counselors.

Lucas Sterling bought the property in 2008 from Ben and Laura Wiedling. The Sterlings are unsure whether the Wieldlings knew the property was contaminated when they sold it.

Leslie Sterling said apparently the deed restrictions that were supposed to be placed on the property were never transferred when it was subdivided.

The Sterlings said they didn’t even know they were on a Superfund site until years after they bought the property, when the EPA came to their house in 2016 and asked to do some tests. After several years and several more tests, the EPA notified them in March 2024, eight years later, of the furan and dioxin contamination at their home and the surrounding acreage.

Tests done by an EPA contractor in October 2023 showed that the Sterlings have levels of dioxins/furans at about 111 nanograms/kilogram in the soil around their home. As a comparison, the background level in Montana is about 3.74 nanograms/kilogram according to a state Department of Environmental Quality study in 2011. Dioxin can occur naturally, most notably from wildfires.

The Sterling’s home actually isn’t the hot spot on the overall site, which is about 20 acres and spans from Berne Road to U.S. 2.

Other tests show that soil samples near Gordon Avenue homes and the God’s 10 display along U.S. 2 have as high as 2,234 ng/kg for dioxins at one site and another site had as high as 2,620 ng/kg of dioxins. 

Deed restrictions were placed on the capped portions of the property, according to a 2007 agreement between the EPA and Richard and Loretta Grosswiler, who were the owners of the property at the time. The Grosswilers predated the Wiedlings and the Sterlings as owners.

“The capped areas shall not be used for development or residential purposes,” the signed agreement stated. But there’s the rub: The Sterlings’ home is located on what was called a “Land Treatment Unit” not a capped area. 

Thus, there was no deed restriction, the EPA said in an email to the Hungry Horse News last year.

“The (institutional control) did not apply to the land treatment unit area which now includes a residential property,” EPA spokesperson Katherine Jenkins said last year.

But the lined land treatment unit, where the Sterling’s home is located, was the very place where contaminated dirt was treated, the EPA concedes. At one point in time, the area was fenced to keep people out. 

The EPA last year said it was considering making the site into a federal Superfund site. But to date, that has not happened. 

Contacted earlier this month, EPA officials declined to comment on the suit. A spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Quality also said the agency does not comment on active litigation.