Chicago officials Tuesday shut down a Southeast Side landfill that they called ”an environmental fiasco,” ending a nine-year legal battle that has twice gone to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The landfill, at Paxton Avenue and 122nd Street, has been leaking contaminants into the groundwater for years, said Henry Henderson,
commissioner of the city`s newly created Department of the Environment.
The facility ”was not properly engineered and its continuing operation posed a serious hazard,” Henderson said.
The landfill was operated by Paxton Landfill Corp. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stryker International Corp. of Chicago, Henderson said. It is within the boundaries of Mayor Richard Daley`s proposed site for the Lake Calumet airport.
Stryker President Steve Martell, 62, a former welder who was often seen at the site in overalls, perched atop a bulldozer, has long been a target of legal efforts by government environmental agencies. Over the last decade, he has been charged dozens of times with operating improper landfills by federal and local agencies.
Martell and his attorney declined to comment Tuesday.
Despite the city`s action in shutting the facility, the site remains the subject of a lawsuit by Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris, who charges that the facility is stacked too high with debris and pollutes the groundwater, said Matthew Dunn, chief of Burris` environmental control division.
The Paxton Avenue facility has been accepting a combination of household garbage and construction debris since the late 1970s, Henderson said. The city first moved to shut it down in 1983, saying the facility`s special-use permit had expired.
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Since then, the city and Stryker have been locked in a legal battle in which the city argued that the facility was improperly zoned and could not meet health and safety standards. Martell contended that the facility`s zoning permit had been wrongfully revoked.
The U.S. Supreme Court first ruled against Stryker in 1987 and then, on Monday, the court denied the company a new hearing on another legal issue, forcing the shutdown.
On Tuesday, city workers posted bright orange signs on the fences around the facility, announcing that it had been closed.
Blocking the front gate with their cars, city workers also turned away incoming garbage trucks.
Although the site is closed, Henderson said the city will now go back to court in an attempt to force Martell to possibly remove waste or reshape the landfill so the site will be completely safe.
Henderson said the city also is seeking more than $2 million in fines from Stryker.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Daley called the Paxton landfill ”just one of many contaminated sites in the area,” and used its closing to tout his airport project, which he said ”would pay for the environmental cleanup of this part of Chicago.”