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Friday, January 14, 2005

Env't - More on blue bag dump site, and other stories

The Chicago Tribune has a follow-up story today to its story yesterday (scroll down) on the disposal of Chicago waste on a farm in NW Indiana. Some quotes:

The operator of Chicago's recycling centers scrambled Thursday to find a place to put the truckloads of waste that are a daily byproduct of the controversial blue bag program.

Officials from Allied Waste Transportation Inc. huddled with Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez after learning that Allied must stop dumping so-called screened yard waste from Chicago at a 1,100-acre farm near Lowell, in northwest Indiana.

Lake County, Ind., officials said Wednesday they ordered Back 2 Basics to shut down unless it gets a zoning change allowing it to dump the yard waste, kitchen scraps, glass shards and other fragments of garbage on its property about 30 miles south of Gary.

Allied Waste did not send any material Thursday to the farm owned by Nathan Sanko, said Kevin Finn, the company's district manager. For the near future, Allied will ship the waste to its landfills in Indiana. The material will be used to cover each day's load of garbage or to shape the landfills. * * *

"This screened yard waste is a complete and total joke," said Ald. Joe Moore (49th). "We've been claiming for a long time that this [stuff] that they pour on the farmland is highly suspect."

In the late 1990s, city contractors began trucking the screened waste to Indiana because Illinois officials insisted it was garbage that belongs in a landfill.

The executive director of Lake County's Plan Commission sent a letter Wednesday ordering Sanko to cease operations. It usually takes three months to get final approval for a zoning change from the County Council.

Linda Cosgrove, an environmental activist who lives near Back 2 Basics, lauded the county for stopping the flow of screened waste from Chicago. She said she is concerned about the concentration of heavy metals, including lead, in the material.

"Everybody down here is on groundwater," Cosgrove said. "I really wish they weren't doing it here."

Indiana environmental officials have said that the operation does not pose a public safety risk.

"County shuts Lowell-area business recycling waste from Chicago" is the headline to this story today in the Gary Post Tribune. Some quotes:
Lake County officials claim they had no knowledge a local man was using solid waste from Chicago as fertilizer on his farm field near Lowell. Officials now have ordered the man to cease and desist operations after a Chicago newspaper contacted them with questions about the organization.

The Post-Tribune reported in 2002 that Lowell-area residents were upset at odors being emitted because Nathan Sanko was using what he called “green dirt” as fertilizer on his farm fields in Eagle Creek Township.

A recent report found Sanko’s green dirt is what industry insiders call “screen waste” that is being hauled in from Chicago.

According to Bruce Palim, deputy assistant commissioner for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Land Quality, Sanko’s company is the first of its kind to operate in Indiana. IDEM issued a land application permit to him in 2000 to use the waste on crops. * * *

Palim said IDEM monitored the procedure closely when Sanko initially applied for the permit allowing him to use the waste on his farm land. A pilot program was in place for about a year, and Sanko had to show IDEM the benefits of using the waste on the crops.

Palim said the pilot program consisted of three plots of land. One contained no fertilization, one contained the screen waste and the third contained a commercial fertilizer. Gauging by the bushels of corn produced per acre on the screen-waste land compared to the others, Palim said Sanko proved to IDEM the material’s benefit to the soil. However, no independent tests were conducted on the soil quality, and Palim said he wasn’t aware of tests conducted on the quality of the crops.

After the pilot program, IDEM gave final approval for the land application permit through 2006, and apparently Sanko didn’t know he needed a special Conditional Development District zoning from the county. IDEM does not require proof of proper zoning when issuing land application permits. * * *

Palin acknowledged there have been problems with the product Sanko was hauling into Indiana. In the beginning, he said, there were issues with improperly maintained screens at the Illinois plant that were allowing larger pieces of waste to enter the mix. In 2002, in a sample of the waste Sanko is required to send to IDEM monthly, high levels of lead were found.

“It was brought to his attention and we haven’t had an occurrence since then,” Palim said. All of the monitoring of the process is done on the honor system. IDEM doesn’t send field advisers to the site, Sanko just sends samples of the product on his own. Now, because of the recent media inquiries, Palim said he would send a field investigator to the site, although he didn’t know when this investigation would occur.

Another NW Indiana waste story today concerns the Feddeler landfill. The story from the Munster Times begins:
LOWELL | Allied Waste dangled a $2.5 million carrot in front of about 50 residents Thursday night in exchange for cooperating with its bid to add 80 acres to its Lake County C&D Landfill just west of Lowell.

Residents, mostly landowners in West Creek Township where the landfill sits, wondered if the $2.5 million, which Allied offered to put toward cleanup of the former Feddeler landfill, was enough to take care of the contaminated site.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 14, 2005 12:48 PM
Posted to Environment