One of the issues that I've been battling for over a decade is the proposal by the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) to put a garbage balefill in northwest Cook County, Illinois, just inches from the border with Kane County. The proposal is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen because the site is located on top of the aquifer which supplies drinking water to many Kane County communities that are near the balefill site. None of those communities are members of SWANCC. I have been challenging the morality and ethics of putting our Cook County garbage on top of the water supply of our Kane County neighbors because a leak in the balefill system would result in our garbage contaminating their drinking water.
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My home town of Buffalo Grove is one of the 23 municipalities that comprise SWANCC. On Monday of this week, I attended the Buffalo Grove Village Board meeting. At the meeting, I again asked the Board to reconsider its support for the balefill project.
I cited a letter, dated April 27, 1990, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency sent to the United States Army Corps of Engineers, in which the EPA stated that "the site hydrogeology is inherently unsuitable for a landfill." Additionally, the letter states that "SWANCC acknowledged in their application to the Illinois EPA that the dolomite [subterranean rock] is hydraulically connected to the Newark Valley Aquifer [now called the St. Charles Aquifer] and, therefore, there would be no natural barrier to prevent contamination from entering the Newark Valley Aquifer if there was a failure of the system. [Therefore,] this site should be considered as a site of last resort."
SWANCC, meanwhile, has attempted through power politics to get the balefill built at this site, despite the fact that numerous other disposal options exist. The reason that SWANCC wants to dump at this site, rather than somewhere farther away, is the same kind of Republican folly that has resulted in no seat belts, yet, on school busses: It costs less in the short term than the other options. It may leak in 25 or 50 years, but by then the politicians who created the problem will be dead of old age, so they won't have to deal with the extremely high cost of remediation. The cost of fixing SWANCC's short term, cheap solution to today's garbage disposal problems will be passed on to future generations, so current residents will save a little bit of money, now, at the huge expense of future generations.
When Rob Sherman talks, the news media listens. On Wednesday, the Daily Herald newspaper published a story about my presentation to the Buffalo Grove Village Board. The Daily Herald, however, always takes the side of local government, and also usually looks for ways to make me look bad, so in their story, entitled, "New balefill permit irks Buffalo Grove mayor," they reversed the position of the US EPA and said that the EPA endorsed, rather than condemned, the proposal. This, despite the fact that I gave my copy of the EPA letter to the reporter. (I have another copy in the office.) I made my customary phone call to the Daily Herald, the one I always make on the day they publish an article about me to complain that, as usual, they reversed the facts to make me look bad. They responded with a follow-up story, yesterday. The follow-up story was part of a weekly column by the reporter who covers Buffalo Grove. The first six paragraphs of that story dealt with an unrelated issue pertaining to the Long Grove Confectionery. The part about my efforts begins with the seventh paragraph of the story. It is entitled, "Sherman skeptical," and makes it clear that the EPA condemned, rather than endorsed, the balefill project.
I will continue to oppose the balefill project. I'll let you know when those efforts have paid off with the cancellation of the project.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
7410
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com