We have a huge, very real problem here in DeWitt County. It threatens the health and potentially lives of 750,000 Central Illinois people.
A company called Area Disposal is applying for and, unless there is widespread opposition, quite likely to get the required permits to haul thousands of tons of PCB laden soil from the Chicago’s federally mandated cleanup to Clinton Landfill starting very soon. Yet again Chicago will literally dump on Central Illinois!
PCB’s are dangerous, poisonous substances with an extremely long life expectancy that are banned because of the severe health risk they pose. That is the one and only reason they are being removed from the Chicago area. They are the substance involved in the Love Canal environmental disaster along with dozens of other disasters. A Google search will provide ample examples of how dangerous they are.
The Clinton Landfill sits directly above the neck of the Mahomet Aquifer which supplies water to about 750,000 central Illinois residents. The Mahomet Aquifer is the only water source available to almost all of these central Illinois residents. If you are reading this you probably depend on the Mahomet Aquifer for your and your family’s water and have no realistic alternative.
The “protection” that will be put between these dangerous chemicals and our water supply consists of:
- Three sheets of plastic equivalent to heavy duty trash bag plastic.
- Three (3) feet of compacted clay.
- Underlying soil the authorities insist on referring to as “clay” while openly admitting no one has any idea how much sand, gravel, voids and dirt is really there.
There will be “testing” to prevent leaks – so they obviously think leaks are at possibility. The Federal EPA “testing” will be done on samples gathered and submitted, unsupervised, by Peoria Disposal and done in Peoria Disposal’s own Lab. Peoria Disposal has a long history of making money by placing the public at risk. They are currently being sued by local residents for failing to maintain their equipment and allowing poisonous, explosive methane gas to leak into the area. They stand to make millions off the PCB dumping and go bankrupt if the “protection” fails and they admit to negative tests.
If (actually “when) the “protection” fails there is absolutely no provision being made to even manage the damage.
Both the Illinois EPA (IEPA) and the Federal EPA’s (USEPA) attitude is “if it meets the regulations we’ll approve it regardless” It doesn’t have to make sense – just meet some government regulations – like the recent oil well debacle in the Gulf. The Illinois EPA has already approved this and one of their geologists told me this is “an extremely bad idea”.
The projected life expectancy is the “protection” system is 100 years. In other words if nothing goes wrong and everyone maintains this properly for 100 years they still expect it to fail in 100 years.
Why is this being done – simple math – more voters in Chicago then Central Illinois. (Chicago > Central Illinois)
We are trying to do what we can locally about it but it’s the very small county of DeWitt, Illinois against a very large company and the Environmental Protection Agencies. Everyone is pretty much convinced they will prevail – the EPA has all but said so.
WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! These type of debacles have been stopped before but not without massive local public support!