Plan for Carol Stream landscape waste facility stalls
Frustrated by a series of project delays, Carol Stream trustees are re-evaluating the terms of a lease they signed nearly two years ago with a company seeking to operate a drop-off facility for landscape waste on village-owned land.
The site has remained vacant since trustees first approved the agreement with Organic Soils, Inc. in August 2014.
The company has now asked the village board to grant a second extension of a deadline to begin construction on the facility along Kuhn Road as it works to obtain permits and other approvals from state and federal agencies.
In response, trustees have directed the village's attorney to renegotiate several key provisions in the lease.
The company's plan first surfaced in 2013 and touched off an online petition that raised concerns about traffic, noise and odor. Both independent contractors and waste haulers serving Carol Stream and other neighboring towns would bring landscape materials to the site, a roughly one-acre lot near the entrance of the village's water reclamation center off Kuhn Road, just north of North Avenue.
From there, landscape waste would be transferred to larger vehicles and taken to a composting facility in Bristol, Illinois.
The terms of the lease with the village are currently slated to begin the first day of the month following the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's approval of a permit to operate the facility. That's also when the company's rent payments to the village are supposed to begin.
In May 2015, the IEPA granted a separate permit allowing Organic Soils to construct and develop the facility. But, to the village's knowledge, the IEPA has not issued a second permit required for operations, Village Manager Joe Breinig said.
Dave Gravel, president of Organic Soils, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Village planners suggested that the company should start paying the village — in $1,500 monthly installments — Aug. 1. But Breinig made it clear negotiations with the company would need to take place before changes could be made to the lease.
Breinig said he expects the board could consider proposed revisions and the deadline extension during a meeting next month.
Trustee Rick Gieser said he won't make a decision about another extension until he sees such amendments.
“The concern for me is that we're tying up the property indefinitely while they're trying to get their approvals,” Gieser said.
The village's special-use permit originally stipulated that construction start within 18 months. As that deadline approached, the village wrote a letter to Organic Soils in January asking about the status of the project and cautioned that the board could move to terminate the permit.
Organic Soils then asked for more time and indicated that crews could break ground on the project in July or August. The board agreed to move the deadline to July 31.
Most recently, the company wants to push the deadline back nine months, to the end of next April, citing approvals related to the project's impact on wetland on the property.