U.S. EPA denies permit to store PCBs in landfill

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided against giving a chemical waste permit to a central Illinois landfill that would allow it to store PCB.

In a statement released Wednesday, the EPA said it based its decision on the Illinois EPA's decision last month to bar PCBs from being dumped in the Clinton Landfill near Clinton. The decision came after the state agency learned local approval of the landfill in 2002 didn't include PCBs.

The Clinton landfill sits atop the Mahomet Aquifer, which supplies water to portions of more than a dozen counties.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are chemical compounds once used in industrial and commercial products such as paints and fluorescent lights. They were outlawed in 1979 because they cause cancer and damage to reproductive and nervous systems.