Frank Schmidt, whose Joliet dump was temporarily shut down by the state earlier this year and sparked a public feud within Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s family, said Wednesday that Blagojevich is preventing him from doing business with state contractors and that he will sue the state to rectify the situation.
In a hastily prepared news conference, Schmidt said he is seeking to block the state from continuing to “blacklist” his company, Land Reclamation Services Inc. He said the state is prohibiting waste haulers contracted with the state for road projects from using his Joliet site to dump their debris.
The suit will be filed Thursday, Schmidt’s attorney, Robert Egan, said.
Schmidt said if the state does not allow state haulers to bring debris to his site, he could lose $2.5 million in work.
In January, Schmidt’s landfill became the impetus for a political firestorm when the state Environmental Protection Agency shut it down, saying it had, in part, accepted construction and demolition debris without a state permit. The move blew open a dispute between the governor and his father-in-law, Ald. Richard Mell (33rd), whose wife is a distant relative to Schmidt.
A week later, state lawyers allowed the dump to reopen if the debris was removed and Schmidt obtained a permit to pump wastewater out of the facility.
Schmidt claims in his suit that the EPA has given his landfill a clean bill of health and that the Illinois Department of Transportation, which certifies landfills for road waste, should stop preventing haulers from using his site.
“We removed 30 yards of soil and [the EPA] told us that we are now clean,” Egan said. “But for approximately a month now, for lack of a better term, we’ve been stonewalled. We’ve gotten no response [from IDOT].”
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Although the suit does not name Blagojevich as a defendant, Schmidt said EPA and IDOT officials have told him the governor’s office has ordered them to block him from getting any business connected to the state. “It’s a quest to shut me down it looks like,” Schmidt said.
Officials with Blagojevich’s administration deny the accusations and say Schmidt’s landfill remains off the certified list because EPA officials still feel the landfill is out of compliance.
EPA spokeswoman Anne Rowan said although Schmidt has removed all the contaminated soil and debris, Schmidt still does not have an up-to-date permit to pump wastewater out of its site.
“It’s our understanding that he’s still pumping and treating without a valid wastewater treatment permit,” she said.
An IDOT spokesman said the department would continue to keep Land Reclamation Services Inc. off the list of certified landfills to accept road debris until it receives the go-ahead from the EPA.
Schmidt insists he has done everything asked of him and that this is simply political punishment by Blagojevich.
After the news conference, Schmidt invited some reporters to meet him for a meal with Mell, but the alderman never showed up.
Reached later by phone, Mell said, “I don’t want to rekindle the feud here. Frank Schmidt is running a clean operation over there. … What’s happened here doesn’t make sense to me.”
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