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Contractor’s indifference to dust and noise complaints rankles city councilman

Reisinger says paving contactor M. Luis has shown a pattern of disrespect to Morrell Park. The company hasn’t responded to his phone calls.

Above: Councilman Ed Reisinger (second to left) stands with Robert Hagmann, Anna Schaal and Deborah Thomas in front of the M. Luis storage site at 3211 Georgetown Road.

It’s one thing to blow off a group of residents who say a company is emitting too much noise and dust at its storage facility in southwest Baltimore.

It’s quite another for a contractor who depends on city contracts to ignore a veteran councilman who lives a block away from the site.

“I have called them and left messages, and they have never gotten back to me,” says 10th District Councilman Edward Reisinger, relating his failed attempts to talk to the managers of the M. Luis Construction Co.

“They haven’t been good neighbors,” he continued. “Seems like they’re not wanting to respect the community. Their grass was like corn stalks earlier this summer. It’s only cut because they got a [housing] citation.”

Reisinger says he can hear the sound of the front loaders and trucks at his Morrell Park house, but is too far away to see the dust that residents say settles on the west side of South Ellamont Street.

“It starts around 6:30 in the morning and goes on all day long. Beep, beep, beep, crash, bang. Noise and dust,” says Anna Schaal, who has lived for 43 years at a meticulously neat rowhouse separated by an alley from the Luis lot.

Anna Schaal took this picture of a truck dumping road material causing clouds of dust behind her house.

Anna Schaal took this picture of a truck dumping road material creating dust behind her house. (Photo by Anna Schaal)

Her neighbor, Robert Hagmann displays three air conditioner filters he says he removed from his house.

Each is coated with white dust that Hagmann says comes from concrete.

With two young children and a wife, Hagmann said he’s worried about air quality and his family’s health.

Attempts to reach Cidalia Luis-Akbar, chairman and CEO of M. Luis, were unsuccessful. She did not respond to emailed questions about Councilman Reisinger’s concerns.

Generous Campaign Contributor

A suburban Washington company founded in 1985 by Cidalia’s father, a Portuguese immigrant, M. Luis has expanded quickly into Baltimore in recent years.

Robert Hagmann says this layer of dust accumulated in his air conditioner filter from M. Luis' operations. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

Robert Hagmann says this layer of dust accumulated in his air conditioner filter from M. Luis operations. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

It now rivals P&J Contracting, owned by “demolition king” Pless Jones, as one of the biggest minority firms doing work for city agencies, with millions of dollars in contracts. The company specializes in street repaving, concrete construction and demolition.

As her company’s work for the city has grown, Cidalia Luis-Akbar has become a generous contributor to the two elected officials who award contracts at the Board of Estimates.

In 2013, she contributed $4,000 (the legal maximum in an election cycle) to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and coughed up $3,500 for City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young in the same year, according to records at Maryland Board of Elections.

More recently, M. Luis has come under criticism as the contractor who repaved Roland Avenue with curbs visibly below the city’s minimum height level.

Cidalia Akbar-Luis and her younger sister, Natalie Luis, run the M. Luis company, which recently relocated its headquarters to downtown Baltimore. (gazette.net)

Cidalia Luis-Akbar and her younger sister, Natalie, run the M. Luis company, which recently relocated its headquarters to downtown Baltimore. (gazette.net)

The city Department of Transportation claimed that drainage problems were at the root of the repaving problems and absolved M. Luis from responsibility.

The agency then awarded the company a $900,000 “extra work order” to replace 16,200 linear feet of curbs and gutters.

Threatening Letter

Schaal said the Georgetown Road site was used for years as a truck repair and storage site. “It was quiet, it was fine,” she said.

But after the property’s owner, a subsidiary of Gilford Corp., leased the property to M. Luis in 2013, hectic activity by the contractor made it nothing like the “storage site” designated in zoning records.

Councilman Reisinger points to front loaders on other side of fence separating the storage lot from houses on Ellamont Avenue. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

Ed Reisinger points to a front loader on the other side of a fence separating the storage lot from houses on Ellamont Avenue. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

Schall said she talked – sometimes angrily – to the crews whose front loaders rattled her home and then started telephoning the property owner.

For this, she received a letter from a Washington, D.C., law firm demanding that “you stop this activity immediately and refrain from any further contact with the Gilfords, their employees, tenants and their landlord.”

Lawyer Christopher A. Taggi concluded his August 22, 2014 letter by telling Schaal, “If you refuse, we will pursue the appropriate legal action.”

The letter infuriated Councilman Reisinger, who encouraged the neighborhood to work with the Community Law Center.

CLC staff attorney Rebecca Lundberg Witt asked M. Luis and the Gilford Corp. last July to meet with the community “to discuss what can be done to eliminate these nuisance conditions.”

Witt said she only heard from Gilford with a non-committal reply. M. Luis did not respond. Since then, Witt and the Morrell Park Community Association have requested inspections from the state Department of the Environment (MDE).

The neat back yards on Ellamont Avevnue that face the M. Luis storage facility. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

The tidy back yards on Ellamont Avenue that face the M. Luis storage facility. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

According to MDE spokesman Jay Apperson, there have been no obvious violations of environmental laws at the site.

On August 25, a solid waste inspector observed stockpiles of apparent clean fill materials such as soil, asphalt and concrete on the property.

“No open dumping or other violations of solid waste rules was observed,” Apperson wrote.

MDE’s air compliance program inspected the site the next day and “did not observe any fugitive dust emissions from the site,” but did advise M. Luis “to have a water hose on site to control possible fugitive dust emissions and to cover stockpiles on the site with tarps.”

A September 3 inspection by a water compliance officer found M. Luis “to be in violation of the requirement for sites with more than 5,000 square feet of earth disturbance to have an approved sediment and erosion control plan,” Apperson said.

Enforcement of such a sediment and erosion control plan would have to come from Baltimore city, according to Apperson.

Doesn’t Want Any Hassle

Contacted about Councilman Reisinger’s complaints about his current tenant, Gilford Corp. president Louis Henry Gilford said he thought the dust and noise problems had been resolved months ago.

“We try to be, as best we can, good neighbors,” he said in a phone interview from his Beltsville, Md., office. “The last thing I want to do is to disturb the neighbors or cause problems. I’ve been in business since 1977, and I don’t want any hassles.”

Saying “I’ve seen the piles,” referring to the road excavations at the site, Gilford said that the material is only supposed to be stored until a large load is accumulated and taken to the city dump.

“It’s temporary stuff there, but I’m going to see if we can stop that.” Reiterating his concern for the community, he added, “I don’t need any tenant giving me a bad name.”

M. Luis equipment parked inside the compound near the alley behind Ellamont Avenue. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

M. Luis equipment parked at the Georgetown Road property. Weed-covered piles of material are behind the vehicles on the right. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

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