Illinois EPA initiates multiple cleanups of potential environmental hazards in East St. Louis

EAST  ST.LOUIS — Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) Director Doug Scott today announced that the Agency is beginning cleanup of several illegal dump sites in the St. Clair County.  Work on two sites begins today, July 17, and weather permitting, will finish Friday, July 27.

 The locations of the clean ups are:

 

Combined, there are well over 1,000 cubic yards of waste, which has been disposed of illegally for nearly the last decade on trustee property and in alley's and ditches.  Over the next two weeks crews will work hard to remove approximately 600 tons of trash from the East St. Louis community and approximately 400 tons from the Washington Park community.

 

Among the waste to be removed are household garbage, abandoned vehicles and tires.  Improperly disposed tires provide a breeding habitat for the type of mosquito that is the primary carrier of the West Nile Virus.  The cleanup is being conducted as part of the recently enacted I-RID (Illinois Removes Illegal Dumps) Program.

 

"Illegal open dumping around Illinois can potentially pose health and safety hazards to both people and the environment, but the I-RID program has begun to tackle those environmental eyesores," said Illinois EPA Director Scott.  "This is the first time in the 36-year history of the Illinois EPA that we have had significant state funds to address orphan open dumps that have festered for years, and I am grateful to Governor Blagojevich and the General Assembly for providing additional funding and authority to Illinois EPA to clean up these messes."

 

Recent I-RID clean ups in the East St. Louis and Washington Park areas have collected nearly 5,000 tons of solid waste and 21 tons of illegally disposed tires.  Since the statewide cleanups were launched, the program has conducted approximately 70 open dump cleanups throughout the state, in both rural and urban areas.  Approximately 11,500 tons of solid waste has been collected and sent to regulated landfills for disposal, 200 tons of recyclable metal waste has been sent to salvage and recycling facilities and 100 tons of tires have been collected and recycled.

 

The I-RID Program became law in 2005 to give the IEPA additional authority to combat open dumping and clean up existing dumps.  These dumps often become a magnet to fly dumpers, and frequently become health and safety hazards.  The program uses part of existing landfill fee revenues to cover costs of additional IEPA inspection staff and cleanups.

 

With the funding, the IEPA can hire contractors to clean up open dumps where responsible parties cannot be located or where various specific imminent threats, such as fire, are present.  The new law also provides for permitting and regulation of the disposal of clean construction or demolition debris, such as in former quarries, and gives the IEPA Director additional authority to seal sites where there is a potential risk for harm to human health or the environment.

 

Working with local and county officials to identify candidates for I-RID cleanups, Illinois EPA has cleaned up sites ranging from the tip of Southern Illinois near Cave-in-Rock to rural central and eastern Illinois and urban locations in the Chicago metro area.

 

The cleanup in St. Clair County is expected to take approximately three weeks to complete, weather permitting.  The IEPA will periodically inspect the site to ensure that the problem does not recur, and has the authority to issue administrative citations to violators of this and other provisions of the Environmental Protection Act.

 

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