"We disagreed vehemently, but we agreed to resolve the matter to avoid expensive and protracted litigation," she tells GlobeSt.com.

It appears Eddins negotiated a pretty good deal since an EPA spokesman estimates the agency spent $3.8 million in tax dollars to remediate years of chromium and nickel-plating contamination at the 42,000-sf site.

Settling at a cost of $139,000, the agency announced last Friday it would accept public comment on the matter over a 30-day period prior to a final settlement agreement.

Local environmental officials first cited Standard Auto Bumper in 1972 over untreated commercial wastewater discharge into an abutting drainage ditch, according to federal records.

The company, founded in 1959, subsequently agreed to treat and discharge the waste into a percolation pit. About five years later, however, local officials documented continuing discharge into the drainage ditch.

In the late 1980s, the agency declared the soil-and-groundwater contamination at site as a potential risk to four area municipal well fields that supply about 750,000 people in Miami-Dade County.

The agency also expressed fears the discharge posed a contamination risk to the Biscayne Aquifer, South Florida's primary source of potable water.

Although agreeing to a remediation plan, Standard Auto officials abandoned the site in 1993 before the EPA issued a final cleanup decision for the natural attenuation of groundwater.

At taxpayer cost, the EPA demolished all on-site facilities and removed about 103,000 gallons of contaminated liquid and 480 tons of solid material. Then the agency removed about 6,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil and about 5,000 tons of contaminated soil mixed with concrete.