Carol Stream drops lease with operator of landscape waste facility

Carol Stream trustees have pulled the plug on a lease with a company that never began construction on a transfer facility for landscape waste haulers.

The board and Organic Soils Inc. have reached an agreement that calls off the deal originally approved in August 2014. The company also will withdraw its initial objections to the board's move to terminate a special-use permit for the facility and effectively quash the project on nearly 2 acres of village-owned land on the west side of the Carol Stream Water Reclamation Center off Kuhn Road.

Organic Soils had not made any rent payments to the village. If the company had secured a state permit to operate the facility, Organic Soils would have started paying the village $1,500 a month in rent, among other fees, under the terms of the original lease.

Construction also was supposed to begin last year, within 18 months after the deal and permit were approved.

But the project became mired in delays, and trustees late last year said they had lost faith in the operators after granting a series of deadline extensions.

Neighbors farther north on Kuhn Road also rekindled their opposition to the facility because of concerns about traffic, noise and odor.

The facility would have operated six days a week for all but two months of the year. Both independent contractors and waste haulers serving Carol Stream and neighboring towns would unload landscape materials at the site. Then trailers would pick up the landscape waste and drive to a composting facility in Bristol.

To the east, the nearest homes sit roughly 1,300 feet away on Arrowhead Trail. In between the homes and the village-owned lot is the water reclamation center.

Robert McNees, an attorney for Organic Soils, told the board in October that the company took the blame for the delays and that developers couldn't proceed until they secured a wetlands permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. McNees apologized on behalf of his client, saying Organic Soils "dropped the ball on overseeing this project and getting the wetlands permit in a timely fashion."

"The (village) staff did point out right up front that there may be a wetlands problem here, 'you should look at it,'" McNees said at the time. "Well, the looking at it consisted of looking at maps that were not current, that did not show a wetlands, and that was a mistake."

The board voted 5-1 in November to start the process to terminate the special-use permit for Organic Soils. Under village code, the plan commission still must make a recommendation to the board for or against revoking the permit and rezoning the land back to its original designation. Commissioners will consider the request Tuesday.

Trustees could decide whether to rescind the permit Feb. 6.