Category Archives: Peoria Disposal Company

Peoria County, Peoria Disposal Company

PDC concessions not likely to change outcome

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Peoria Disposal Company is trying to woo Peoria County Board members into voting for their landfill expansion by making some concessions. Briefly, these concessions include (according to the Journal Star):

  • agree not to expand over trench C-1 (oldest part of landfill)
  • reduce the expansion area’s life to 12 years (down from 15)
  • shift landfill operations to 275 feet from the eastern boundary
  • agree to pay a yearly flat fee of $281,250 into a perpetual care fund
  • allow County Board committee veto power over any new waste streams
  • guarantee the Sankoty aquifer will not be polluted
  • place earlier proposed conditions in a host agreement enforceable in circuit court

PDC’s attorney told the Journal Star “the concessions should meet all the concerns expressed by board members, the county’s staff and even opposition groups.” I think it meets some of the concerns expressed by those various people, but definitely not all.

In early April, the board voted down three of the nine criteria for approval of the expansion. PDC’s concessions may change some votes on two of those three criteria, but they don’t change anything regarding criterion number one: whether this expansion is needed to accommodate area waste. PDC still only needs this expansion so they can continue to receive waste from out of state. If the board didn’t feel that was needed three weeks ago, they’re not going to feel it’s needed next week.

If just one of the nine criteria isn’t met (in the judgement of the county board members), they have to vote against the expansion request.

Bill Dennis, a hazardous waste proponent, casts a cynical eye on the county board, saying, “If the county board rejects this now, it just provides proof they rejected the permit contrary to the evidence and were prejudiced against it from the start.” Of course, in reality there is evidence for both sides in this battle. A board member’s disagreement with Bill’s interpretion of the evidence does not prove anything except that two rational people can look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions.

Peoria County, Peoria Disposal Company

Peoria County poised to deny PDC expansion

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The Peoria County Board took an “initial vote” on the PDC landfill expansion request tonight, and unless some board members change their mind between now and May 3 when they take the final vote, it looks like the application will go down to defeat.

I wasn’t able to attend, but WEEK-TV was there and offered this report on this evening’s news.

The county board can only evaluate the site application based on nine criteria (listed here verbatim from the county’s website):

  1. The facility meets the needs of the area it is intended to serve;
  2. Public health, safety and welfare are protected in the facility design and location;
  3. Care has been taken to minimize the incompatibility of the facility with the character of the surrounding area and property values;
  4. The facility is outside the boundary of the 100-year flood plain;
  5. The facility operating plans minimize the danger to the surrounding area from fire, spills or other operational accidents;
  6. The traffic patterns to and from the facility minimize the impact on existing traffic flow;
  7. An emergency response plan for the facility has been developed to include notification, containment and evacuation procedures in case of an accidental release.
  8. Groundwater protection provisions have been met; and
  9. The facility is consistent with the County’s solid waste management plan.

In their “initial vote” tonight — WEEK called it a “dress rehearsal” — the board approved only seven of the nine. The two they didn’t approve? Numbers 2 & 3 above — the same reasons I was against the application.

Expect to see some heavy lobbying by the Journal Star, Peoria Pundit, and of course PDC over the next few weeks as they try to persuade the board that having a hazardous waste dump next door really won’t affect property values or endanger our health. Maybe they can also try convincing us that pigs can fly.

I’ll be hoping the vote on May 3 is the same as the vote tonight. The board made the right decision.

UPDATE (4/7/06): WMBD-AM Radio and the Journal Star this morning report that the county board voted down three of the criteria — the two WEEK mentioned as well as number 1 above (in other words, they voted the expansion is not needed to accommodate area waste). The vote was 10-7.

Peoria County, Peoria Disposal Company, Uncategorized

Landfill expansion: Common sense says “no”

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I have refrained from commenting on this topic because I had high hopes of wading through the public hearing transcripts, site application, letters recommending passage/denial, etc., etc. But, alas, I simply don’t have the time to do that.

But there are some things I know about the landfill that I don’t need to read 5,000 pages to discover: it’s just outside the city close to residential neighborhoods, it sits over an aquifer that supplies most of our drinking water (or to be precise, “sands hydrolically connected to the San Koty aquifer), and it has hazardous waste buried in it including heavy metals like lead and mercury.

Based on those facts, plus things I’ve read on both sides of the issue (Journal Star, Bill Dennis, PDC, Families Against Toxic Waste, etc.), I think the common sense position is to vote this down. I’m primarily opposed to its placement, not the mere existence of it.

But there is one other thing I’m opposed to, and that’s the fact that they receive most of their hazardous waste from outside this area. Proponents of the hazardous waste landfill like to throw the n-word (NIMBY) at opponents, as if we Peorians are just creating all this hazardous waste and want someone else to take it off our hands.

In reality, the exact opposite is the case.

We’ve been taking on the toxic waste of ten other NIMBY states. 84% of the hazardous waste PDC collects is from outside of Peoria. I think we’ve been more than generous by having all that filth in our “backyards” these past 15 years. It’s time for other cities and states to step up to the plate and take responsibility for their own hazardous waste.

There’s plenty of legal justification for voting this project down based on risk to health and safety and the adverse impact it would have on property values. The county board should deny PDC’s request for expansion.

City Council, Peoria Disposal Company

A couple thoughts on the landfill issue

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.

Blogosphere, Peoria Disposal Company, Peoria Park District, Uncategorized

PDC and PPD: The plot thickens

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Remember when I called up Bonnie Noble because I was surprised that the Park District came out in favor of the proposed PDC landfill expansion?  Well, apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was surprised by that — so was the Park Board.

The Journal Star today reports that Noble’s letter, even though it was on Park District letterhead, did not reflect the park district’s view:

The Park Board voted at its Feb. 22 meeting not to take a position on the proposed landfill expansion. Trustee Jim Cummings said then that Noble’s letter doesn’t represent the official position of the park district.

That actually makes me feel better about the park district as a whole. If Noble wants to express her own opinion, that’s fine — she made some interesting points.  However, to print her personal feelings on park district letterhead misrepresents the Park Board to Peoria County.

I hope county board members are aware that Noble’s letter is not a park district endorsement of the landfill expansion.

(P.S. In the category of “things that may be of interest to other bloggers,” my blog was actually quoted in this Journal Star story.   If they’re reading my little opinion columns, you can bet they’re reading other Peoria bloggers, and it’s gratifying to know they’re listening to us.)

Peoria Disposal Company, Peoria Park District

The Park District, the aquifer, and the other side of the story

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There are always two sides to every story, so today we’ll look at PDC’s side of the aquifer question. Here to defend PDC is a surprise advocate: the Peoria Park District.

The mission statement of the Peoria Park District is “To enrich life in our community through stewardship of the environment and through provision of quality recreation and leisure opportunities.” One definition of “stewardship” is “caring for land and associated resources and passing healthy ecosystems to future generations.”

Imagine my surprise when I happened upon this letter from the Park District urging approval of PDC’s landfill expansion. The letter states, in part, “We have served PDC as a supplier over the past several years. It is crucial for the PDC siting application to be approved . . . The economic impact to our organization may be substantial if we cannot count on PDC’s business due to the closure of the PDC No. 1 landfill.”

That raises a couple of questions in my mind. First of all, what is the Park District supplying to PDC? And secondly, why are they in favor of the expansion? I called the park district to ask and got to speak with none other than Parks Director Bonnie Noble herself.

She was an unapologetic advocate for the landfill expansion. In response to my initial question about what the Park District supplies PDC, she said that when they were building the Riverplex, PDC helped them remove and dispose of some underground storage tanks, plus they handle waste from the zoo. Also, PDC provides all the waste receptacles and clean-up for riverfront events.

She went on to state why she wholeheartedly supports the expansion. She feels there is a lot of misinformation being spread by opponents of the landfill. For instance, she disputes the contention that the landfill is located over the Sankoty aquifer. It’s actually over the “Shelbyville outwash,” she contends. I can’t find any independent verification of that, but I’m not a geologist, of course. However, PDC’s application does make a similar distinction:

The Lower Sand [of the local geology] is a side-valley outwash facies of the Sankoty Formation. It is an immature, poorly-sorted, brown, fluvial sand that was deposited by local tributary streams that discharged from the west into the ancestral Mississippi River Valley. The side-vally outwash facies should not be confused with the Sankoty Sand. The Sankoty Sand is a mature, well-sorted, fluvial sand that was deposited directly by the ancestral Mississippi River. The sand grains of the Sankoty Sand are distinctly-pink and uniformly of pure quartz composition . . . The sedimentary bedrock forms an impermeable hydrogeologic basement. The existing PDC No. 1 landfill and the proposed landfill expansion are or will be constructed in the Upper Till. Perched groundwater is discontinuously present in isolated sand lenses within the Upper Till.

The implication seems to be that this “side-valley outwash facies” is a separate entity from the Sankoty aquifer. This portion of PDC’s application is certified by two Illinois-licensed professional geologists who conclude after considerable analysis, “the proposed expansion is favorably designed and located to prevent any adverse impact on the groundwater.”

I hope they’re right.

Noble also took issue with calling the waste PDC received “toxic.” She felt that calling it “toxic waste” played on people’s emotions, and that a more appropriate name would be “hazardous waste.” I won’t argue with her on opponents’ transparent effort to play on people’s emotions. But I don’t think it’s overstating the point to describe this waste as “toxic.” The EPA describes the chemicals PDC takes in as “toxic,” so I have to disagree with Noble on that point.

So, how do I feel about it now? Well, my previous post on this topic was predicated on the belief that the landfill expansion was going to be over the Sankoty, and I was concerned about the increased risk to our drinking water. If the expansion is not over the Sankoty and there is no increased risk, then I guess my primary concern has been answered.

On the other hand, I’m never going to have warm-fuzzy feelings about hazardous waste. And I’m never going to be pleased that we’re accepting this waste from ten other states. But until I hear expert testimony from the other side — say, another licensed geologist or two — I can’t very well just dismiss the opinions of the geologists in PDC’s application.

Overall, I’m in agreement with other commenters who advocate attacking this problem from the supply-side. How can we avoid producing toxic waste in the first place? And what can be done to recycle it instead of burying it? Those are the questions we need to be asking so we can find an ultimate solution to our toxic waste problems.

And I still think it’s weird that the Park District advocates expanding a toxic-waste landfill. Isn’t that kind of like a vegetarian advocating the expansion of Alwan & Sons Meat Company?

Peoria Disposal Company

A little remedial geology

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One of the big arguments against an expanded toxic waste landfill is its location. It’s positioned over the Sankoty (sometimes written “San Koty”) aquifer. If you’re like me, you probably don’t remember a whole lot of that geology stuff from grade school or high school and you’re thinking to yourself, “what the heck is an aquifer?” Here’s what I’ve found out.

Simply stated, an aquifer is a water-bearing layer of earth. In fact, the word “aquifer” comes from Latin: aqui- which means “water,” and -fer (from ferre) which means “to bear.” The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “aquifer” as “a body of permeable rock that can contain or transmit groundwater.”

Beneath our feet us here in Peoria, there is a layer of sand and gravel that is porous and saturated with fresh water. It’s about 100 feet thick and is, thus, an abundant source of water used for both irrigation and drinking water in the region. I couldn’t find much information on the name “Sankoty,” except that it’s apparently named after the water well field on the northeast side of Peoria (source: Illinois State Water Survey). Illinois American Water Company uses three well sites to draw from the Sankoty aquifer, which accounts for 60% of our tap water.

The picture to the left (from the Gulf of Maine Aquarium website) shows a good cross-section of the different layers of earth and how a simple well is used to access the water in an aquifer. They describe how an aquifer works like this:

[P]recipitation (both rain and snow) runs into lakes, rivers, ocean, or into underground storage areas called aquifers. Aquifers are underground reservoirs. The water that reaches these chambers is usually much cleaner than the water of reservoirs at the earth’s surface. Almost no bacteria live in aquifers. Many pollutants are filtered out as the water passes through the soil on its way to the aquifer.

Clearly, this is an important natural resource for our region and one that we don’t want to see contaminated. Naturally, the people at PDC are professionals and they are doing everything they can to keep the aquifer from being contaminated. But even they would agree that there is a risk of contamination, even though they would argue that the risk is very low.

Let’s take a look at where exactly this Sankoty aquifer lies. Since it’s beneath the surface, it’s hard to find a map of it. However, I finally discovered one on the National Atlas of the United States website:

The dark blue lines are above-ground bodies of water; the gray lines are county borders; and the shaded blue area is the Sankoty Aquifer that lies below the surface. I’ve notated Pottstown on the map so you can see exactly where the toxic waste dump is located in relation to the aquifer.

Note that the aquifer does not underlie all, or even most, of Peoria County. Thus, it’s conceivable that another site could be found in the county for the dump that wouldn’t risk our groundwater at all, rather than expanding in its current site. Ideally, the current toxic waste could be relocated away from the aquifer as well, although I suppose that’s not financially feasible.

The more I study this issue, the more I’m convinced the county should deny the landfill expansion. I just can’t see any benefit to putting our groundwater at further risk, however low PDC promises us that risk would be. I can’t think of a better example of an issue on which it would be better to err on the side of caution.

Peoria County, Peoria Disposal Company

This won’t be the last post on Toxic Waste

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I went to my neighborhood’s association meeting tonight.  Among other things, we had a presentation from a representative of Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste.  There’s plenty of information about this topic out there, but tonight they handed out a letter written by Bill Cook, Professor of Chemistry at Illinois Central College, that I hadn’t seen before and was quite interesting.  I reprint it here to kick off the first of what will probably be several posts about PDC’s plans to expand their landfill.  Here it is: Continue reading This won’t be the last post on Toxic Waste →

Peoria Disposal Company

Peoria families starting to rally against proposed PDC expansion

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Way back in November, the City Council heard a presentation from Peoria Disposal Company (PDC) about how they want to expand their landfill in Pottstown, just outside the city limits.  They didn’t have to do this presentation, since it’s a Peoria County decision, but they did it anyway as a courtesy to the city residents who will be affected (or unaffected, they argued) by this expansion.

At that time, they mentioned they were going to be filing an application to expand, and that a public hearing would take place 90-100 days later.  That would put it roughly in February 2006, which is almost upon us.

So I wasn’t surprised when I got this e-mail from a concerned citizen:

We are very concerned regarding PDC’s proposed expansion of it’s toxic waste dump just down the road in Pottstown. We’ve found that many Peorians don’t even know this site exists and the County Board is now tasked with deciding if it can expand even further.  Key facts:

-The toxic landfill is one of only 15 in the US; 14 states ship their toxic waste here.

-The dump sits atop an aquifer; the company claims their plastic liners will last “centuries” but that promise seems highly unrealistic and certainly unproven

-PDC is Peoria County’s second highest facility contributing to cancer risks (160,000 lbs annually); (source: Scorecard.com)

-PDC ranks 19 of all US companies with the highest toxic chemical releases in the nation (20 million pounds annual; 1st in Peoria County). (source: Scorecard.com)

-PDC is ranked #4 air polluter in Peoria County (source: Scorecard.com)

-According to its website the Peoria County Board only requires PDC to notify residents within 250 feet of the site and one notice in the Journal Star. The Board indicates this is a “very public”, “many step” process to “inform” and “educate” the public (see website link). We disagree.
http://www.co.peoria.il.us/display.php?section=county&page=pdc

-Lastly, the company has a good reputation and the owners are respected locals.  However, our common sense concern about the health and safety of our children is more compelling than the owner’s reputation. Furthermore, the company can always sell to a non-local corporation, putting Peoria and our neighborhoods in even greater jeopardy.

The list of concerns goes on and on but you get the idea.  We’ve just started a new group call “Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste”.  We have lots of information and want to ensure our neighborhood is informed.

I thought there would be a fight on this one.  The issue is one of risk — how risky is it to have all this toxic waste on our border?  In their presentation last November, PDC was adamant that their safety measures were impeccable, and I don’t doubt it.  But as concerned citizen John McClain said after the presentation that night, there are things out of the company’s control (natural disasters, accidents, terrorism) that could compromise the safety of the dump. In other words, there’s still a risk; the question is, how much risk are residents willing to accept? I suppose we’ll find out at the public hearing.

City Council, Peoria Disposal Company

Council Roundup: Peoria Disposal Company

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Peoria Disposal Company (PDC) wants to expand their landfill in Pottstown, and some Peoria residents aren’t happy about it.  But don’t complain to the city council — it’s a Peoria County decision.

Mayor Ardis explained that PDC was giving tonight’s presentation at his request as a courtesy, but that no discussion or vote would be taken since it’s not in the city’s jurisdiction. 

Brian McGinnis, attorney for PDC, explained that they would be filing the application tomorrow morning to expand the landfill.  Once it’s filed, PDC will not be able to comment publicly on it until a public hearing is held.  That hearing will happen within 90-100 days of filing, probably in February.  So, anyone who wants to speak for or against the expansion should keep an eye out for the public hearing date.

Peoria Disposal Company was founded in 1928 by the Coulter family and has been family owned ever since.  Chris Coulter, Director of Sales and Business Development, touted the company’s 100% compliance with Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) inspections, earning them the Environmental Compliance Award for 12 consecutive years.  He also said that the company wants to expand because they will run out of capacity in early 2009 and they want to continue servicing their current customers.  They don’t expect any increase in annual waste receipts.

Ron Edwards, Vice President of Landfill Operations, tried to allay fears that hazardous waste at the site would infiltrate ground water, surface water, or air quality.  He explained all the treatments and precautions the landfill applies to hazardous waste.  One of the more surprising slides was the one comparing (contrasting, actually) PDC and Love Canal. 

Van Auken, once again, asked the questions on everyone’s mind:  Why are we one of only 16 communities who have this kind of disposal?  Why do other communities not want this kind of disposal in their cities?  Why should Peoria take this risk?

Later, during citizens’ requests to address the council, three people spoke out against the landfill expansion.  Dr. John McClain said his concern is not that PDC is bad company; in fact, he believes they are a good company.  However, there are things that they can’t control: accidents, natural disasters, terrorism.  He concluded, “We are accepting hazardous material that other communities do not want and our safety cannot be guaranteed.”  Of course, the usual objection from the Sierra Club was voiced.  But perhaps the most eloquent opponent of the expansion was Bill Cook who observed, “This expansion is privatizing the benefits and socializing the risks.”  That is, PDC gets all the profits while hundreds of thousands of residents shoulder the risk of potential contamination of our water supply.

Expect a battle on this one.

Received and filed.