Locomotive graveyards article? - Trains Magazine
Pielet Bros. has closed. And I believe the site has been leveled.
The former Pielet Brothers was purchased and renamed Midwest Metallics LP in the mid 1990s. In 1998 the EPA took Pielet Brothers and other associated businesses to court to get them to clean up a site in NW Indiana that was unlicensed and was accepting illegally Auto Shredder Residue tyhat contained lead and PCBs. It was then listed as a "Supersite".The United States subsequently filed a motion for summary judgment seeking recovery of $2,959,006.34 in unrecovered response costs from owner James Pielet. After the Court granted Pielet several extensions of his deadline to respond to the government's motion, Pielet elected to default, resulting in an order making substantive findings that Pielet was liable to the United States for all remaining past costs at the Site.
I was a member of one of the fire departments that responded each time good old Pielet Bros. had their once-a-year, two-day fire in Summit, Illinois.
I was always suspicious of the origin (they always claimed spontaneous combustion, of course) as was anyone in a helmet and bunker gear that had to stand there and dump water on the huge pile of shredded material for over 48 hours, usually in the heat of summer. Of course, it was always the towering mountain of separated combustible materials from the salvage operations that went up -- and the origin of that material was not exclusive to trains. My opinion was that it was cheaper to burn than haul away.
From a news report four years ago:
"City council members in Summit, Ill., have voted unanimously to demolish buildings at the shuttered Midwest Metallics LP scrapyard (former Pielet Brothers).
Summit officials still need legal clearance to take down an undisclosed number of buildings at the abandoned site and will ask local courts to place a lien on the property to recoup the demolition costs.
Midwest Metallics has been an environmental nightmare for local officials and little has been done to remediate the site since the shredding operation shut down for good in 1996. According to published reports, a pile of automobile shredder residue, measuring about the length of two football fields and four stories high, remains on the site.
Midwest Metallics reportedly inherited much of the debris when it bought the scrapyard from Pielet Brothers Scrap Iron & Metal Inc. in 1993. Pielet Brothers was founded shortly after World War II in McCook, Ill., and later was headquartered in Argo, Ill. Known as one of the largest auto scrap processors in the region, the company was purchased and renamed Midwest Metallics in the mid-1990s.
Summit city officials would not disclose demolition costs and said no one had an interest in acquiring the contaminated property. State environmental officials said the site required extensive cleanup and estimated the cost of that work at around $11 million."
Co-owner Arthur Pielet died in 1999.
