Category Archives: Peoria County

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.

Board of Election Commissioners, Peoria County

Pens too difficult; must have computers

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I got a card in the mail yesterday from the Board of Election Commissioners. It was instructions on how to use the new voting equipment.

I’ve been voting for a while now in Peoria. My first ballot was on those “butterfly ballot” machines where you punched a hole in a computer punchcard. I was only 18 when I used that for the first time, and even at that tender age, I was able to figure out the complex system of names and punch-holes.

Later, they started using a plain paper ballot and a felt-tip pen. All you had to do was complete the arrow; essentially the instructions were “draw a line next to the person’s name for whom you want to vote.”

Now, we have computers to make our lives easier. So here are the six simple steps for casting a ballot with our new voting equipment. This is verbatim from the Board of Election — I’m not making this up:

  1. Turn the SELECT wheel to highlight your language and press ENTER.
  2. Turn the SELECT wheel to highlight the first number of your ACCESS CODE. Press ENTER. Repeat for each number.
  3. Turn the SELECT wheel to highlight your ballot choice. Press ENTER. The box to the left of the choice changes to red. Repeat for each contest. You can turn pages on the ballot with PREV or NEXT.
  4. Read the Ballot Summary Page carefully. Only after you have made all of your desired choices, press CAST BALLOT from the final Ballot Summary Page to proceed to Ballot Verification.
  5. Read the Paper Verification Page carefully and verify your selections on the printed record. Only after verifying the printed record, turn the SELECT wheel to highlight Accept Page and press ENTER.
  6. After you have verified and accepted all printed pages, press CAST BALLOT to finish voting.

You have finished voting when you see the waving American flag. The printer displays “Ballot Accepted” and scrolls to a blank page to ensure voter privacy.

Pressing the CAST BALLOT button after you have verified all printed pages completes the voting process and records the ballot.

Oh yeah, that’s soooo much easier to understand and execute than drawing a line with a felt-tip pen. Thank goodness for modern technology.

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 →