Midway locals have complained for years that the smell of the treatment ponds disrupts daily life, especially when the seasons change. But some residents also worry the ponds are a health hazard.
Now, four Midway homeowners are turning to the legal system to try to address the stench.
In a lawsuit filed Friday, Feb. 14, in 4th District Court, the residents allege the service district minimized their concerns and failed to do enough to fix the problem.
The residents’ attorney, Eric Vogeler, writes that the district’s alleged failure to adequately maintain the facility has resulted in “significant and traumatizing personal injury to and illness in” his clients and “significant devaluation” of their home values.
Among the health issues cited by residents in the lawsuit are headaches, nasal congestion, nausea and sleep disruption.
The lawsuit asks the district to address the alleged problems and compensate the residents for the wrongs they say they’ve suffered.
Vogeler said he expects to represent a larger group of residents as the lawsuit proceeds.
“We fully expect that there are other neighbors in that vicinity who will join the lawsuit,” he said. “We just felt it was incumbent on us to act quickly and start the ball rolling.”
He said his clients would have preferred to address their concerns outside of court. He said one of the things that tipped the balance was the district’s recent application to become an industrial protection zone, a designation that would have shielded the area from what Wasatch County manager Dustin Grabau described as “frivolous lawsuits.”
“I think everyone has been very hesitant to sue,” he said. “At a town hall meeting, the HVSSD chair stated that one of the reasons they wanted to designate it as a protected industrial area was to make HVSSD immune from lawsuits, so that a lawsuit like this couldn’t be brought – and that’s very concerning.”
Local leaders explained last fall the district would still be liable for legitimate health and safety issues if it became an industrial protection zone, but the district later withdrew the application after Midway residents and leaders shared concerns about the optics of the move.
Vogeler said his clients sued because they no longer trust that the district will act with any sense of urgency to address the odors and the alleged health impacts.
“Our plaintiffs are not looking for a windfall,” he said. “They adore the Heber Valley, and they’re just despondent that they can’t enjoy their property in the way they had hoped. And the thought that they not only can’t enjoy it in the way they thought, but that one day if they ever do have to move, they’ll take a huge financial hit – it’s heartbreaking for them.”
He said one of the biggest questions in the lawsuit is whether the district has done enough to meet the needs of the growing community.
“One of the things we said in our complaint was that lagoons are – while they’re relatively common for wastewater treatment plants, they’re typically a rural solution, and when they were installed in the Heber Valley, that area was almost certainly very rural,” he said. “Now it’s suburban.”
He said it’s possible the district should have adopted a different means of managing the valley’s wastewater.
But others argue the issue stems from county residents’ relatively recent proximity to the treatment plant. Grabau has said the main change is new construction near the sewer ponds, rather than negligence on the district’s part.
The district was not immediately available for comment on the Presidents Day holiday.
Meanwhile, scientists are still working to understand what causes the smell and what health effects, if any, the ponds might have.
Researchers from Utah’s Environmental Epidemiology Program are conducting a risk assessment for a toxin called hydrogen sulfide, which has a rotten egg smell and can cause symptoms like headaches, fatigue and respiratory problems. Data collection ran through summer 2024 and will resume around mid-April.
