CONTAMINATED: Thousands of Indiana meth houses have not been cleaned

Following the October incident, owner Glenda Nickols had to get in touch with one of the state’s 30 firms certified to clean up meth properties. It came out and did a test, which showed a concentration of hazardous chemicals. The company did a thorough cleanup, followed by a second test, which came in at acceptable levels.

The cleanup process took about six months and cost $4,900. It’s July, and the house is still vacant because Nickols hasn’t had time to repaint and ready it for rent again. The home rents for $475, so she’s already sunk about one year of payments into the cleanup, while losing out on months of income and having to pay for taxes, utilities and mowing.

“We had to do it. I didn’t want to tear it down,” Nickols said.

Nickols is one of 115 property owners in the four-county area who have been cleared by the state for properly cleaning up meth contamination in a home, outbuilding, hotel or vehicle since 2008.

But nearly 400 other homes, apartments, garages, sheds, barns or hotel/motel rooms haven’t been cleaned, some which have been sitting in a contaminated state since 2007, when the Indiana State Police started tracking homes that have been tainted by meth manufacturing.

The meth-house problem is growing, too. In many cases, an owner either chooses not to clean up the house or simply abandons it. If the owner doesn’t clean it, counties, cities and towns are the only ones left to address it. But gaining ownership of a meth-tainted property can take years, and tearing down the building can cost thousands of dollars. The cost and hassle mean local governments typically can take care of only one or two sites per year.

“It pretty much comes down to money. The property owner doesn’t have money to clean it up, and some of them sit and linger. It’s several thousand dollars sometimes to get them cleaned,” said Bernie Sukala, environmental health specialist at the DeKalb County Health Department.

Meth contamination is a health hazard because chemicals can seep into furniture, carpet, walls or floors and cause lingering dangers such as respiratory issues or increased cancer risk, Sukala said. Health departments issue no-occupancy orders, which means no one should be inside the building, although sometimes residents will go back in or squatters will set up in the vacant properties.

If police bust a meth lab inside a home or other building, some type of remediation must be done in every case before the home can be reinhabited, Indiana Department of Environmental Management Qualified Inspector Program Director Lori Kyle Endris said.

An owner can choose to demolish a house without doing any testing, Endris said. Otherwise, a qualified inspector must come in and do an initial test. If that test shows hazard levels are below state thresholds, the owner can get the house certified as clean without any further action. If it comes back “hot,” above those levels, then a decontamination is required, Endris said.

Cleanup varies in case to case and can include washing and scrubbing surfaces, throwing out soft items such as furniture, or having to tear out walls, ceiling or flooring that has been contaminated. Once the cleanup is done, another test is needed. If it’s still showing hazardous contamination levels, a second round of cleaning is required, and the cycle repeats until the home meets state standards.

Owner can do the cleanups themselves without hiring specialists, but in order to get the state to sign off, an owner essentially would have to strip the property down to the studs and rebuild all the walls and floors to make sure any potential contaminants have been removed, Endris said.

Only then will the state certify that a property is clean. Since 2008, 51 properties have been cleaned in Noble County, 31 in DeKalb County, 18 in LaGrange County and 15 in Steuben County.

If it’s not cleaned within six months of the meth lab’s removal, the property is added to the Indiana State Police meth lab addresses database, Endris said. Those properties aren’t removed from the database unless the Indiana Department of Environmental Management issues that certification, said Indiana Meth Suppression Unit secretary Dennis Benny, who maintains the listing.

According to that listing, all four northeast counties have significant backlogs of structures that have yet to be cleaned. Noble County has 141 buildings that need to be cleaned; 88 in DeKalb County; 86 in LaGrange County; and 73 in Steuben County.

Statewide, more than 4,200 structures have yet to be addressed, compared to 1,500 that have been certified as clean.

The counties are losing ground in the fight , because new meth houses are being added faster than owners, counties and towns can clean them.

“Nobody is keeping up, and the counties just can’t afford it. It’s just money is the main problem,” Sukala said.

Rental property owners, such as Nickols, are more likely to clean up their own properties for two reasons, Noble County Health Department environmental specialist Jason Pippenger said. First, a rental property is supposed to be a money-maker, so any time it’s sitting vacant, it’s not generating revenue, he said.

But second, rental owners typically can make an insurance claim to pay for the cleanup because the damage was done by a tenant, he said.

In owner-occupied homes, an insurance company won’t pay for the damage because the owner was the one causing it by doing something illegal, Pippenger said. That’s if they even have insurance, and many meth houses are already rundown buildings that people are willing to just abandon, he said.

Noble County has been trying several methods to get more cleanups done, although the county has averaged only about seven cleanups per year. A county ordinance requires owners to come up with a cleanup plan within 10 days, otherwise they can face fines up to $5,000 if they don’t do anything, Noble County Commissioner Chad Kline said. In cases where officials can’t locate an owner, the county eventually might be able to take ownership of the property if taxes aren’t being paid.

Then, the county can either try to find an adjacent landowner who is willing to take ownership and do the demolition, or the county can pay to demolish the property, Kline said. Funding for demolitions is extremely limited, however, to about $15,000 per year, which is typically only enough to do one or two buildings — maybe three if they’re all very small.

“We’d love to be able to increase that amount to clean up the county quicker, but taxes aren’t rolling in,” Kline said. “We’d love to see some more initiative from the state to be able to provide some funding mechanisms.”

Some state grants are available, but one that Noble County had received in the past required the owners to agree to sell the property for a nominal amount in order for it to be demolished. The county wasn’t able to use the grant, because officials either couldn’t get owners to agree to sell or simply couldn’t find them, Kline said.