Polluted Indy golf course will cost everyone $6 million

For decades, the concoction of trash, industrial chemicals and sewage sludge buried near the Whispering Hills Golf Course was out of sight, out of mind and, as far as Indiana environmental regulators were concerned, contained.

In April 2014, an Indiana Department of Environmental Management site inspection discovered the landfill cap had eroded due to natural wear and tear, compromising a critical barrier designed to prevent the toxins from escaping.

Now, Indy Parks may have to pony up as much as $6 million to install new protections for the contamination at the old Julietta Landfill, a longtime industrial dumpsite on the southeast side that the city converted into the public golf course in the early 1990s.

Later that decade, it was leased to a private landfill operator, and served as a dump for commercial and industrial waste until 1976, when the Indiana State Board of Health determined the site’s geology was unsuitable for use as a landfill, and the private operator voluntarily closed it.

Julietta Landfill cap breach at Whispering Hills Golf Course Pam Guffin, left, and Kathy Mitchell, right, play nine holes at Whispering Hills Golf Course, who’s driving range is located on the site of the old Julietta Landfill on the East side of Indianapolis, Thursday September 22nd, 2016.

In 1995 with a landfill cap and various monitoring protocols in place Whispering Hills Golf Course opened to the public.

The golf course itself is across Senour Road from the landfill, but the driving range sits at the northern end of where the refuse was buried.

In 2009, IDEM issued a boil-water notice for a water well on the golf course, which was city-owned but privately run.

When a 2014 site investigation found standing water atop the landfill, and evidence that the cap had been damaged, IDEM issued a violation notice to the city, setting off a series of assessments as the city and IDEM put together a plan to fix it.