DuPage officials relieved landfill issue resolved

Hindsight being 20/20, DuPage County officials say they should have never gotten into the landfill business.

The reaction comes on the heals of a multi-million-dollar settlement between homeowners, the landfill operator and the county's forest preserve district over ground contamination from a former landfill at Mallard Lake Forest Preserve near Hanover Park.

"A landfill is not the best thing to have in a forest preserve," said current forest preserve board President Dewey Pierotti. "I don't think you can find where running a landfill is in our mission statement."

The landfill operated at the forest preserve from 1974 to 1999. It was intended to raise money for future recreational improvements at the site, such as ski slopes. However, along the way complaints surfaced about whether the landfill was being operated safely. Eventually, state environmental officials discovered large deposits of methane near homes and vinyl chloride had seeped into residential wells.

Thursday, homeowners settled those complaints with a $5.5 million deal for the vinyl chloride contamination and $2.5 for the methane problem. BFI Waste Systems paid all the costs of the homeowners' suits, but neither they nor the forest preserve admitted any liability. While state officials linked the methane issue to the landfill, no direct link has ever connected the vinyl chloride contamination to the landfill.

"It's good to have this issue resolved," said forest preserve commissioner Roger Kotecki, who represents the district where the landfill is located. "But it will take a while for it to be finished."

Methane extraction continues at the site. Homeowners live with methane alarms in their homes. A small fortune collects interest for the forest preserve because it can't be spent in case other landfill-related problems crop up in the future.

"It's better than sitting there with nothing," said county board member Pat O'Shea, who was once chairman of the county's landfill committee. "When we left it there was $220 million in the landfill fund and the forest preserve uses the interest off that for other things."

O'Shea said the county acted as quickly as it could to cap the landfill and close it down once problems were discovered.

"We still had 20 years left out there," he said. "I don't believe we should have or could have acted any quicker. The landfill was providing a great service at a reduced cost to taxpayers. And when we wanted to close, you have to fill it to the design contours or you'll have other problems."

O'Shea said he'd have never approved of the landfill idea if he'd been around when it was brought up.

"My philosophy has been that government should not get in the way of private enterprise," he said.

County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom said future landfill plans were scrapped once the problems began to mount. Those problems included the absence of any actual recreational benefits. The ski slope plan fizzled because the capped landfills radiated so much heat that they almost instantly melted any snowfalls.

"I think we clearly came to the conclusion that there was not any recreational benefit that came from this and that there obviously long-term problems," he said. "In my opinion, the lesson we learned is we should not have had landfills in forest preserve districts and in retrospect it was a mistake."

Pierotti said the decision-makers who approved of the landfill plan in the 1970s had good intentions, but they did not put "checks and balances" in place to ensure it was done right.

"But to be quite honest," he said, "if someone approached us with the concept today I could not support it, and that's even being aware of the checks and balances that have been put in place."