Kaneland looking to ditch the dirt

It doesn't seem like it should be a big deal to get rid of a pile of dirt.

Just spread it out on the lawn, or shovel it in to a low spot in your yard.

But Kaneland School District 302 might end up spending $500,000 to get rid of a really big pile of dirt left over from excavation for its 2004 expansion of Kaneland High School in Maple Park.

The school board this week agreed to seek prices on hiring a civil engineer to figure out what to do with the 30,000-cubic-yard hill northeast of the school.

It already knows no one wants to buy the dirt. There's too much organic material in it to be suitable as structural clay fill, and not enough to be top soil, said assistant business official Julie-Ann Fuchs.

Leaving it there is not an option either: the hill could interfere with future plans to add fields or parking at the school and it already is affecting drainage on a soccer field.

"It sits right in the wrong location," Superintendent Charles McCormick said.

The district has posted six no-trespassing signs, but that doesn't keep people off the pile. Athletes have run up it as an unofficial part of training. In April an 8-year-old boy attending a youth soccer game decided to play on the hill, lost his balance and fell off, sustaining minor injury. Dirt bikers also have also been spotted.

Normally, the dirt would have been disposed as part of the construction process at the high school. But the district thought it might need some to fill in spots at the middle school built on Harter Road, and that it could save money by using the dirt from the high school, said business superintendent Tom Runty.

However, the middle school didn't need extra fill after all.

Fuchs estimates that it could take 2,000 dump-truck trips to take the dirt to a landfill or move it elsewhere on the school site. And all that heavy truck traffic is likely to speed deterioration of driveways and parking lots on campus, some of which are due to be repaved this year.

The district owns 40 acres of farmland east of the school; it would take about 37 acres to put down a layer of dirt 6 inches thick. But it can't just spread the dirt there, or elsewhere on the school campus, without first figuring out how it will affect surface drainage for two watersheds that converge on the property and form Big Rock Creek.

"That is patently illegal," Runty said.

Fuchs expects to have an engineering proposal ready for the board's consideration in June.