The Tazewell County Health Services Committee approved spending $16,700 Thursday for what may be the final needed testing on the Pekin Landfill while the committee members are scrambling to secure a deal with the state that could lead to having the site finally sealed safely in 2012.
Ray Corey, the Health Department’s director of solid waste, said he has been meeting with people from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources about obtaining $500,000 to dredge silt from the Illinois River to dry and put over the landfill. However, thanks to what Corey described as Pekin Landfill Committee member Dean Grimm’s “twisting their arm,” he said the DNR is now considering giving the county $1.5 million to dredge silt for topsoil and, more importantly, packaging the funds with a court order giving the county access while relieving the county of all legal liability at the site.
The question of the county being able to get access to the privately owned landfill while avoiding legal liability has been one of the biggest obstacles to progress on capping the improperly sealed, long-abandoned waste site.
However, according to Grimm, the issue is very time-sensitive, as the DNR would like to get the plan in motion before the election to tout as a political victory for the governor’s office. With the election less than three weeks away, though, the county will have to move quickly.
“This is the governor’s fund and they’ve got $8 million in it,” Grimm said. “They want a photo op and a few other things prior to this election and we’ll get this money. So there’s a lot of urgency here.”
In order to move forward, the county will have to enter into an inter-governmental agreement with the state, which would have to be approved by the whole county board which meets Oct. 27. Health Services Committee Chair Michael Harris said he hopes to have the agreement drawn up by Oct. 21 so it can be reviewed before the full board meeting.
The $16,700 approved Thursday will go to pay Patrick Engineering to test the wells at the landfill using a more accurate method, purging the wells to get a more representative sample of the water under the ground there. Corey said the last tests likely took samples containing solid lead particles in the wells, while the new method should allow Patrick Engineering to clear those pieces and test the lead levels within the actual water itself to determine if too much lead is leaching into the underground water supply.
If the tests show the leachate problem is not as bad as initially believed, the county could use a much cheaper method than purchasing the polyethylene liner and using a net drainage system. Instead, the county could follow the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency guidelines and simply seal off the top of the landfill with two feet of clay and two more feet of topsoil, and using a wetlands filtering system for the leachate that is apparently only coming out one side of the landfill. Corey said this option would cost anywhere from a quarter to half as much as the other method.
The testing should start Monday and could provide the information the county needs to make a final decision on how to solve the problem of the unsafe landfill, according to Harris, who said the IEPA has confirmed this to him.
“The IEPA is in with us,” Harris said. “They agreed this is the test we’re going to need to make a decision.”
The test results will be vital, because the state needs to have a plan laid out by the county before it will give the county the money for the “Mud to Parks” program.
If all goes well for the county, then the tests will reveal the leachate problem is mild enough to allow for the cheaper seal, the state will give the county a court order to fix the property while protecting it from liability, and the state will give the county $1.5 million to dredge silt to use as topsoil.
However, according to Corey, the money will pay for about 71,500 wet tons of silt, but the county is going to need about 158,000 wet tons to over the landfill, an amount that would probably cost more than $3 million to obtain. Plus the county will need to find a cheap source of clay.
Health Department Director Amy Tippey also pointed out that the silt would have to dry out before it could be taken to the landfill site, which means the earliest it could be applied would be the spring of 2011. And with the total amount of work needing to be completed, the finishing date would likely be the spring of 2012, according to Corey.
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