I’ll have more to say about this issue later, but I wanted to say a couple of things now.

First of all, thank you to my council representative Barbara Van Auken for taking the time to voice her opposition to the landfill expansion on behalf of the second district. Also thanks to at-large councilman Gary Sandberg for voicing his concerns as well. I don’t know if any other council members spoke, but I didn’t see any mention of it in this Journal Star article if they did.

Secondly, I’m not buying this argument from Les Bergsten:

But Les Bergsten, chairman of the Peoria City/County Landfill Committee which has taken no stand on the expansion, argued the county cannot afford to lose the business connected with the PDC landfill. American companies without convenient waste disposal will move elsewhere, he said.

If that’s true, then Peoria should be booming with new business, especially industrial business. I mean, PDC is one of only 15 such toxic waste dumps in the country. Why haven’t companies been knocking down our door the last fifteen years so they can be close to our coveted toxic waste dump?  PDC is accepting toxic waste from several other states — why haven’t the companies in those states moved to Peoria to be nearer the landfill?  That argument just doesn’t wash.