The village of Crestwood agreed to settle a lawsuit Tuesday with more than 300 current and former residents who claimed the suburb supplied them with tainted well water.
The $15 million settlement is meant to compensate the victims of the well contamination and their surviving families.
One of those people in the lawsuit was Ronald Szwajkowski, a former Crestwood resident who claims the brain tumor that took his wife's life was caused by the tainted drinking water.
"I appreciate the current regime of Crestwood, making some kind of compensation, (but) no amount is going to justify what happened," Szwajkowski said.
Current Crestwood Mayor Lou Presta fully supports the settlement, but he also says there has never been any evidence proving the village's well water made people like Szwajkowski's wife ill.
The state department ordered the shutdown of the well in 2007 after it discovered the village had been filing fraudulent paperwork to hide its use of the bad well. Two former Crestwood village officials were charged in the case.
In 2009, Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office sued the village, saying it provided contaminated well water to residents for about two decades. Crestwood's drinking water supply was a mix of the contaminated well water and water from Lake Michigan, despite an order from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency not to use the well water for that purpose, according to the Southtown Star.
Local
Five years later, an agreement was made between Crestwood Mayor Lou Presta and a representative for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan that demanded the village pay a $50,000 fine but admit no guilt.
Today, several current and former residents still blame the well water for the illnesses that have plagued them and their families. Tricia Krause, a former resident, says all her children suffered severe medical issues from the village's drinking water.
"We have no family history of any of these cancers of 100 people on either side," Krause said.
