Operators of a controversial West Side site dumped more than 340,000 tons of construction debris on a series of vacant city lots and received at least $600,000 in fees for the dirt and broken concrete, city lawyers say.
The disclosures came Friday in a lawsuit filed by city prosecutors seeking to shut down what they call an illegal landfill.
The six-story-high mounds of dirt and debris, taken from government road construction projects and piled near an elementary school in the residential neighborhood on the West Side, have sparked citizens complaints as well as a federal investigation into the operations.
City lawyers say construction executive John Christopher operated the site without the necessary permits for at least 16 months.
Lawyers for Christopher said he is not running a dump but is recycling construction materials, contending that the operation doesn`t require a permit because the crushed concrete and dirt there is not waste under city law.
However, on Friday Judge Lester B. Foreman of Cook County Circuit Court ruled that the material on the site was waste.
”There is no question that not only large, but exorbitant quantities of what I term debris have been stored on these premises with only the mere prospect of recycling,” Foreman said. ”It`s just plain debris.”
Although the ruling was a partial victory for the city, a full trial will begin next week to determine whether Christopher`s operation should be halted, and whether the site should be cleaned up. Any cleanup would take at least one year, Christopher`s lawyers said Friday.
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City lawyers calculated the financial data using two boxes of company invoices reflecting the truckloads of debris dumped at the site, as well as how much Christopher was paid by trucking outfits to accept the broken concrete and dirt. They said the invoices covered only a portion of the material dumped on the site.
City lawyers calculated that 16,977 truckloads of debris were delivered to the site at Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue, for which Christopher`s firm was paid $568,173. At another location, Christopher sold about $16,000 of recycled gravel, or about 131 truckloads, city lawyers calculated.
That means about 1 percent of the material that comes in leaves, Foreman said.
But lawyers for Christopher disputed those calculations, contending that only 9,000 truckloads of debris were dumped on the site, and they said thousands of tons of concrete have been recycled and sent to construction sites.