In Wauconda, PCBs and other pollutants poured into a stream and contaminated residential drinking wells.
In South Chicago Heights, cancer-causing vinyl chloride was detected in a municipal drinking well.
In Waukegan, toxic heavy metals and cyanide seeped into a ditch and then into a park pond where youngsters fish. The seepage exceeded the maximum level considered safe by the state for several years until at least 1981, court records show.
Various organic pollutants have been found in underground water systems in Du Page County`s Blackwell Forest Preserve, and fears that the pollution might spread have led to the closing of a nearby swimming lake.
In each of these cases of pollution, the proven or suspected culprit was a municipal landfill-one of the final resting places for most of the 31,500 tons of garbage generated daily in the Chicago area.
Yet federal and Illinois laws and regulations are inadequate to ensure that such landfills-more colloquially known as town dumps-are located, built and monitored properly.
”Our regulations are in terrible shape,” said Lawrence Eastep, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency official in charge of issuing landfill permits. ”We don`t have the authority to do things that 90 percent of our people in the field think are necessary.”
The Pollution Control Board, a state rulemaking agency, is considering changes in the regulations that could go into effect by the second half of 1988 or early 1989, but many officials acknowledge that government has been slow to grapple with these problems. Environmental groups are urging sweeping rule changes to prevent future pollution of waterways and underground water systems, called ”ground water.”
Ground water is the drinking water supply for 5.5 million Illinois residents. Most Chicago-area residents get their drinking water from Lake Michigan, yet an estimated 2 million of them still use well water, mostly in the five collar counties, according to figures from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Many of the worst cases of pollution involved older landfills that opened before the passage of environmental laws mandating that the most hazardous materials go to sites with special permits, not to municipal landfills.
Those laws effectively create two kinds of dumps, those for hazardous waste and those for solid waste. The solid-waste category includes city dumps and industrial ones.
Despite the distinction, many of the older municipal dumps contain the same materials as the hazardous-waste sites, and even newer ones contain highly toxic material not defined as ”hazardous” under federal law.
And, officials and environmentalists say, regulations do not yet provide the highest degree of safety at the nation`s 9,284 municipal dumps.
Illinois regulations on solid-waste landfills, unchanged since 1973,
”have cost us the ability to require state-of-the-art technology” on landfills under construction, said Harry Chappel, manager of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency`s compliance section.
The state EPA often has imposed tough restrictions on operators of new landfills anyway, even without the authority of stringent regulations, by making certain technological requirements a condition of granting a permit. But the state regulators say they cannot do so consistently or always make their requirements stand up in court.
Deficient state regulations make it difficult to find out about existing pollution problems from closed landfills and to ensure that new landfills include the best technology, officials say.
The key deficiencies in Illinois and federal laws and regulations as pinpointed by state officials and environmental groups include:
– Illinois law requires a landfill operator to monitor ground water quality by drilling wells for five years after a dump closes. But pollution of water systems can take place years later, officials say.
”The fact is, if you don`t have accurate monitoring, you don`t know what problems are there until a community water supply is contaminated,” said Joan Anderson, a member of the state Pollution Control Board who is urging changes. – State and federal regulations don`t require a landfill operator to install an underground system of pipes to collect the toxic seepage, called leachate, that accumulates in all landfills. Nor do the regulations require operators to treat the leachate. Illinois environmental officials say such a system, and such treatment, are crucial to avoid having the stuff ooze into streams or underground water.
– Current state and federal regulations permit too wide a latitude over where a landfill may be located, officials and environmental groups say. For instance, Eastep noted, landfills may still be started in abandoned rock quarries, despite blasting-induced cracks that can allow toxins to seep out.
– Illinois and federal regulations don`t specify the steps a landfill operator must take immediately when pollution is found. Thus, said state EPA officials, clean-up may be delayed because of time-consuming court proceedings or negotiations.
In short, these city dumps-in contrast to the more than 400 heavily regulated landfills exclusively for hazardous waste-have oozed between the cracks of federal and state laws and regulations.
Further, many of the older landfills that closed when the state EPA started up in 1971 never had wells drilled to determine ground-water quality, agency officials said. According to a list made available by state EPA officials, there are about 1,500 closed landfills in Illinois. Hundreds were closed without ever having nearby ground water checked, state officials said. Of Illinois` closed landfills, 79 are in Cook County, 23 in Du Page, 38 in Lake, 32 in Will, 28 in McHenry and 31 in Kane, records show.
Possible dangers from the closed sites diminish with time as their pollutant levels fall through natural processes, but the health risks of landfills are difficult to measure, said Louise Fabinski, who monitors such issues for the federal Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It isn`t known what levels of many contaminants in drinking water are safe for humans, she said, and it takes years for many cancers or other diseases to develop.
Money-or the lack of it-has been the root of many of the shortcomings in regulating solid-waste disposal. In 1981, the Reagan administration cut off the $13 million in federal money that had been available to states for, among other things, dump inspections.
As a result, Illinois officials say their inspection of the solid-waste sites has been severely hampered. That may explain, in part, why a Waukegan municipal dump on Adelphi Road could accept what is believed to be hazardous material during the 1970s in violation of a state-issued permit, according to federal and court records.
That site leaked toxic leachate in 1985 into a ditch ”believed to be a tributary of Lake Michigan” before court-ordered remedial measures were taken, according to Lake County court records. Federal records also show some lead contamination of residential well water nearby, though at levels below those allowed in state standards for drinking water. Robert Lessman, an attorney for the landfill operator, said his client, Henry Tewes, didn`t know what haulers were putting in the dump.
One Illinois EPA official familiar with the state`s inspection program said current staffing ”does not allow us to respond adequately where we`ve been given information that leads us to believe there`s a serious problem”
with a solid-waste landfill.
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And agency officials said lack of money and manpower stopped their 1984 effort to revamp Illinois regulations on solid waste landfills.
”We just didn`t have the resources in terms of manpower to defend our proposed regulations,” Eastep said of the 1984 effort.
The Pollution Control Board has held hearings on changing the regulations, but it could take at least a year before any new measures go into effect. Regulations proposed by the board`s scientific staff would prescribe specific measures that a landfill operator must take when pollution is found, as well as setting standards for collection and treatment of the leachate.
”Our existing regulations are grossly deficient,” said board member Anderson. ”Enforcement is made much more difficult under these rules.”
Meanwhile, the federal EPA, under pressure from Congress, is working on new regulations that could toughen standards on landfills where municipal waste is disposed. But critics say the process has taken far too long, and many state officials agreed in recent interviews.
”The federal EPA has really forgotten about solid waste,” said Cliff Gould, who directs landfill inspection in northeastern Illinois for the Illinois EPA. ”But the same problems that can happen at a hazardous-waste landfill can happen at a solid-waste landfill-with ground water contamination, and so on. People who have been in this business for quite a while have always realized solid waste is a serious problem.”
”The federal government decided not to stress (regulation of) solid waste and not to fund it,” said William Child, the state EPA official in charge of reducing pollution of underground water systems and land. ”It`s not that we made a decision that it wasn`t important. We felt that it was.”
Valdas Adamkus, the federal EPA`s Midwest regional administrator in Chicago, said, ”I believe we didn`t have full realization of the gravity of the problem” until recent years. ”But when we realized that improperly designed solid-waste landfills could also contain hazardous materials, we started focusing on solutions to the problem.”
But Adamkus said it`s unlikely the federal government will come up with the money to adequately finance inspections and other stringent regulation of garbage landfills.
Many municipal landfills, including several currently operating in the Chicago area, accepted hazardous waste before 1980, according to officials and environmental groups. The Mallard Lake landfill in Du Page County is one of several sites that accepted what were then known as ”special wastes.” That category included materials that today are defined as hazardous, said Dr. Robert Ginsburg of Citizens for a Better Environment.
Many critics in environmental groups say that municipal landfills also may still be accepting hazardous waste, sometimes unknowingly, despite lack of such a permit, because some haulers may mix hazardous and household waste together and pay the less expensive landfill fees for household waste.
Various changes in federal and Illinois law and regulations are being urged.
For instance, the five-year cutoff of ground-water monitoring in Illinois is ”ridiculous,” said Kevin Greene, Chicago research director of Citizens for a Better Environment. Richard DiMambro, a staffer of the state pollution board, said five years is ”way too low” to ensure no pollution takes place. Illinois EPA officials also say that, while they often are able to persuade operators of new landfills to install leachate collection systems, there are cases where they haven`t been able to do so.
In one older case where leachate wasn`t collected-the closed municipal landfill on Adelphi Road in Waukegan-the highly toxic and foul-smelling leachate poured out onto the ground in several places in 1985, according to court files and interviews.
Marvin Grasswick, a neighbor to the east, said leachate ended up in his basement after being pumped into a storm sewer and backing up, and that the smell in his yard was sometimes ”so bad you couldn`t stay outside.” He said conditions have improved as a result of court-ordered removal of leachate from the landfill.
At another closed Waukegan dump, on Yorkhouse Road, toxic heavy metals and cyanide seeped out at least from 1979 to 1981 into a ditch and then into a pond at Bevier Park used for fishing and swimming, according to court records and interviews with neighbors. Lake County health officials say the contaminants have since decreased to acceptable levels.
Some of the worst pollution sites in Illinois date to before the state EPA`s inception in 1971, and the agency is trying to upgrade regulations to ensure they don`t happen again.
At Wauconda, an abandoned quarry was used from 1950 to 1977 to receive both municipal garbage and toxic chemical wastes, according to federal records.
The first of three households near the Wauconda site whose well was polluted was that of Thomas and Jane Brown, of 28911 Garland Rd.
They had been drinking their well water for about eight years when the state EPA notified them in 1980 of pollutants, including carcinogens, in it. Such testing by the agency is available on request for people like the Browns living near landfills, though in their case the well testing was done on the initiative of state officials, Mrs. Brown said.
The Browns had a new well drilled and haven`t had problems since. But
”it was a nightmare,” Mrs. Brown said, referring to the time when officials wearing gas masks tested on their property. ”The EPA and the Lake County Health Department almost lived at our home for three years.”
The Browns went to various hospitals for testing, and while no obvious health problems have resulted from the water, ”you`re never certain,” she said. ”If my kids get up tomorrow and have some kind of symptoms, it will be in the back of my mind.”
Illinois regulations aren`t clear enough on what to do when pollution near landfills is found, state officials complain. As a result, said state EPA attorney Donald Gimbel, enforcement proceedings have been time-consuming and sometimes unsatisfactory.
”We have municipal sites where we`ve been unable to get corrective action taken under the regulations,” said Robert Casteel, a state EPA spokesman.
For instance, carcinogenic vinyl chloride turned up in a South Chicago Heights municipal water well in June, and the well has been closed. The EPA concluded tentatively that a toxic plume was spreading underground from the Fitz-Mar municipal landfill in neighboring Chicago Heights, Casteel said, though an attorney for that city said there are other landfills nearby that could also be to blame.
The state EPA is seeking to get the operator and the City of Chicago Heights to clean up the site.
”New regulations would be helpful,” said state EPA attorney Gimbel. If state law or regulations ordered specific cleanup steps in such cases, he said, ”The judge wouldn`t have to create his own relief.”
WEDNESDAY: How a well-intended state law helped create a garbage crisis.