We need your help

DeKalb County needs your help. Thanks to a short-sighted county board and appointed administration this community could be the host to a 17 county, 2.5 mile long and 113 ft high mega-dump as our Welcome Sign for traffic coming from the east on I-88. This siting, if approved by the Illinois EPA, would help Waste Management of Illinois expand its marketshare and boost its profits. That might even be cause for its parent company to convince stockholders to give CEO David P. Steiner a much needed bonus to add to the $6,961,423 total compensation package he received last year. A grassroots group of citizens, Stop The Mega-Dump, needs your financial support to meet legal fees to try to stop this travesty.

The traveling circus of expert landfill witnesses, who testifide that each and every time they’ve ever testified, they always did so in favor of whoever paid them, convinced a majority of the county board that their current client, Waste Management of Illinois, met all nine criteria required to expand the landfill in Cortland to accept the garbage from 17 counties.

From the beginning of the Siting Application process it has been painfully obvious that the minds of the supposedly impartial county board were made up before the public hearing. As early as a year before the start of the actual siting hearing, county board members were making statements that suggested the County had no choice but to approve the landfill expansion.

Board members and appointed staff also often spoke of the County’s desperate need to obtain revenues to fund the county jail expansion. The county board twice asked taxpayers through a referendum to fund the expansion. Taxpayers rejected the requests. Clearly, the landfill siting proceeding and the expansion of the jail were connected projects and proceeding on tandem timelines.

Staff and “members of the jury” negotiated a host fee agreement with Waste Management that designated funds for the jail, for the forest preserves, for the DeKalb County Economic Development Corporation, and for the County’s Go Green Initiative prior to the submission of the siting application.

The County may have the Host Fees. The host community is Cortland. In an all important public hearing to determine whether the applicant met the required criteria to expand a landfill from 340-to-2,000 tons of garbage per day no one from the Town of Cortland, its trustees or its mayor, asked questions or confirmed/denied testimony. The Town of Cortland entered into an agreement with Waste Management that forbid town officials from objecting to the siting application (or from assisting anyone else who might object).

Waste Management is paying the legal fees for the County. That’s part of the deal. And that’s why we need your help.

If this does get finally approved, trash could be brought in from anywhere. Everyone knows that the expanded landfill would serve metro Chicago. Even WMI admitted there was no guarantee that the mountain of garbage left for our children will not leak. According to research, all landfills eventually leak. WMI chose not to notify the public of an H2S leak. H2S is a deadly gas. A grade school is within 1/4 mile of the current, not expanded, landfill. H2S has been detected at that school. We are asking for your help in the fight to protect our children, our land and our water for now and generations to come.

Our claims were and are way more complex than simply that the decision was not fair.  There was an ordinance which discouraged people from participating, the minds of the supposedly impartial county board were made up before the hearing and WMII and the County engaged in pre hearing activities (private tours) which violated well established rules of conduct.  The issues in this case are not run of the mill.

The appellate schedule for our appeal will likely take a year.  After that there is the possibility of an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.  During the appeals WMI can apply for a developmental permit at their peril, but the EPA can not issue an operational permit until all appeals are concluded, meaning no garbage into the expansion during the appeal.

For grassroots help:

• Take your aluminum cans to DIMCO, 900 Oak St., DeKalb and ask them to apply the money to the Stop the Mega-Dump account. We will pick your cans up for you and take them there as well, call 815-793-0950 to set that up.
• Write your state and federal congressional leaders. Tell them that County Administrator Ray Bockman wrote to IPCB Hearing Officer, Bradley Halloran, that he understood our confusion and agreed this process merits change. He wants landfill expansion opponents to stop blaming the County Board and start petitioning the Illinois General Assembly. Tell them you have started petitioning for urgent change to prevent this travesty.

Cortland Township trustees voted formally and unanimously to reject any expansion of the landfill in a March 9, 2009 resolution to the County Board. A township garage packed with more than 200 registered voters (electors) overwhelmingly rejected the expansion at a special annual meeting held in May, 2010. Apparently, even though the trustees and citizens of Cortland Township were relying on the authority provided the township under the Illinois Township Code (60 ILCS 1/30-120), which reads, “The electors may prevent the deposit of night soil, garbage, or other offensive substances within the limits of the township. This section does apply to refuse disposal facilities regulated by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the county in which the facilities are located,” there’s no law to protect them from the county… according to the county.

We need donations of any amount, make checks payable to Stop the Mega-Dump and mail them to: Stop the Mega-Dump, P.O. Box 363, DeKalb, IL, 60115.