The Chicago Tribune has a story last Friday that began:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich ordered a Joliet landfill closed Thursday, two weeks after he found out one of his wife's cousins is alleged to have told construction waste haulers he had clout and they could dump anything at the site without scrutiny from environmental regulators.A second story today reports:A top Blagojevich aide said the governor got involved in a matter normally handled by rank-and-file state employees to send a message that nobody in his family should expect special treatment, in particular his father-in-law, Chicago Ald. Richard Mell (33rd).
Wielding the same rarely used power that led to the quick closing last week of a Joliet landfill run by a relative of First Lady Patti Blagojevich, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has asked state inspectors to visit a controversial south suburban dump with the intent to shut it down, administration sources said Sunday. * * *For those with long memories, the LA Times reports today, in a story headlined: "Ex-EPA Official Gets 15 Months for Wire Fraud":The dump near Ford Heights has been operated by John Einoder of Orland Park. Einoder has been facing civil environmental charges lodged by Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan's office involving the landfill, which last fall encompassed 11 acres. The charges include operating a waste-disposal facility without proper permits and open dumping. * * *
The Ford Heights landfill began operating in 2002 under an agreement with the village aimed at turning the facility into a ski slope once dumping is completed. In August, inspectors from the Illinois EPA reported that the dump appeared to have doubled in size since May 2003, when it was 67 feet high.
Lawmakers during last year's spring legislative session tried to protect the Ford Heights facility from shutdown efforts by Madigan and the state EPA through the passage of a bill that would have exempted the dump from environmental regulations because it was being constructed as a "recreational facility."
But Blagojevich vetoed the legislation in August, and state EPA officials said there was no guarantee the site would ever be turned into a ski slope. Only days before the governor's veto, Madigan, at the request of the EPA, filed a lawsuit against its operator and the case has been slowly making its way through the courts, most recently in arguments over the dump's legal representation.
A former high-ranking official in the EPA during the Reagan administration was sentenced Monday to 15 months in federal prison for wire fraud and making false statements to the FBI.A lengthy story in the Louisville Courier Journal Monday, headlined "MSD fertilizer plans troubled: Agency takes steps to fix smelly, fire-prone pellets", reported:Rita Marie Lavelle orchestrated a scheme to fraudulently obtain money from a client who had hired her San Diego County company to assist in the cleanup of a Superfund site, federal authorities said.
The Metropolitan Sewer District's plan to turn treated human and industrial waste into fertilizer pellets has been beset by problems with odor, dust and fire.Posted by Marcia Oddi at January 11, 2005 07:28 AMThe fertilizer, called Louisville Green, was so smelly at one Indiana fertilizer and topsoil business that workers threatened to quit, and it caught fire and burned two storage buildings in Arkansas.
"Sometimes (the odor) was awful bad," said Wayne Mannis, an Arkansas fertilizer dealer who lost some of the pellets in the two fires. "Consider the source, then you can understand it."
To fix the problems, MSD has added an iron compound to reduce odors, an oil to dampen dust and a flame retardant to reduce its combustion potential. But these steps bring increased costs that could reduce revenue.
MSD is also studying a potential multimillion-dollar upgrade of its Morris Forman Wastewater Treatment Plant to fully break down sludge — a move that could end Louisville Green odors, but one that would be on top of $70million already spent on a treatment system that produces the pellets.
Despite the problems, which are spelled out in reports and memos obtained by The Courier-Journal under Kentucky's Open Records law, MSD officials and businesses that have tried the product remain optimistic about its potential, saying most new business ventures have hurdles to overcome.