Odor complaints continue despite action on many fronts
Reports of foul odors continue to be a vexing concern for Countryside landfill in Grayslake, although several actions have been taken or are scheduled to address the issue.
Even some long-complaining residents admit there has been progress in the years-long effort to quell the rotten-egg smell caused by the release of pungent gases.
“There are a lot of people paying attention,” said Mike Kuhn, the solid waste unit coordinator for the Lake County Health Department. “There’s a lot of time and effort being put toward this by a lot of people.”
But there still is a sense of frustration with a problem that has resulted in dozens of complaints the past few weeks.
“This has been pretty bad — bad enough that my daughter asked to wait in the car for the (school) bus instead of waiting outside,” said Barbara Klipp, a resident of the Prairie Crossing neighborhood bordering the landfill.
Klipp, a member of the two-year-old Incinerator Free Lake County, has been among the most active members of the public in researching and speaking out on landfill issues.
She also was among many who testified last March during a packed public hearing at Grayslake Central High School hosted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Countryside wants to increase the amount of permitted emissions of sulfur dioxide, a product of combustion which can aggravate respiratory ailments.
That application is pending results of air modeling to determine the concentrations of pollutants around the facility.
Federal and state regulators continue to be heavily involved, as do local elected officials. Grayslake, Lake County and the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, for example, are working together to secure more authority over the landfill operation. Each has set aside $10,000 for potential legal fees if solutions can’t be reached through negotiation.
“The local control is what we’re really after here,” said Pat Carey, a Lake County Board member from Grayslake.
“The devil will be in the details, but I think that’s a very positive action,” Klipp wrote recently in a message to neighbors.
Meanwhile, landfill operator Waste Management Inc., has increased the frequency of monitoring and spent millions of dollars on equipment and other measures since 2008 to control the odor problem. More work is planned.
“Countryside will continue to be vigilant and aggressive to deal with these issues,” said Bill Plunkett, a spokesman for the company.
Improvements include more than two miles of gas collection pipe and 24 collection wells, Plunkett said. A new self-adjusting flare to burn off gas was installed in October 2010. The original was refurbished and recently made available as a back up.
Waste Management also has ordered a generator, expected to be installed early next year, to be used in the event of a power failure. Outages last February and June knocked out the flare and resulted in odor complaints.
The generator and backup flare is “above and beyond what most landfills have,” said Walter Willis, executive director of the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, which has oversight of waste recycling and disposal.
“A lot of things are being done,” he said, adding he thought a “good, hard effort” was being made to address concerns.
Other actions also are expected to have an impact.
The U.S. EPA in early 2010 cited Countryside for failing to control emissions and causing odor complaints. This past July, the agency issued an administrative consent order outlining steps Countryside must follow to control and measure emissions.
“That will formalize the improvements we’ve undertaken at Countryside,” Plunkett said. “It addresses a number of things almost all of which we’ve already undertaken.”
Among the measures is a detailed “waste acceptance plan” for construction and demolition materials. Recycling facilities delivering to Countryside must be preapproved and their facilities inspected.
Ground gypsum from the waste recycling process, which leads to an elevated level of sulfur compounds and odor problems, is not allowed in any form. Countryside accepted the material, known as fines, for most of 2008 but has since stopped that practice.
Gases from the landfill, including hydrogen sulfide, are collected and burned at the neighboring Countryside Genco LLC, to produce electricity for sale. Excess gas is burned by a flare at the landfill. Sulfur dioxide is produced when the gases are burned.