County Board's landfill decision: a more detailed account

PEORIA -- Tracy Fox attended the meeting of the Peoria County Board, as it made it's decision on Dec. 10 to try to keep hazardous materials out of the future city/county landfill.  (See previous story below.) Here is her account of the meeting:

"The County Board’s Health & Environmental Issues committee approved the resolution banning delisted waste (with the original EAF dust wording) 5-1 with only Merle Widmer against. The board voted in favor 15-3 with only Merle, Brad Harding and Bob Baietto voting against. 

The most interesting point was when Brad Harding asked Assistant State’s Attorney Bill Atkins if he was bound to vote on the landfill committee in line with the county board. Atkins said no, but there was a moral obligation. Both Mike Phelan and Allen Mayer jumped all over that and were quick to interject that Brad served on the committee at the pleasure of the chair and would jeopardize his assignment if he didn’t toe the county board line.

 

Baietto had clearly given the issue some thought and felt that having served on the committee he knew nothing unsafe was going in. He gave a three safety nets speech … net 1 = landfill committee who would never endanger public health, net 2 = IEPA and net 3 = citizen watchdogs esp. Tom Edwards.

I think his points were valid but we just weigh risks differently than he does. Lisa suggested afterwords that we get net ponchos to start wearing to all the meetings … really hilarious at the time but maybe you had to be there.   It was also interesting that Ryan Spain’s plan has now morphed into a large effort to learn everything possible about special waste with experts from IEPA and industry as well as representatives of the various companies being brought in every month between now and August.

Brad tried to get the board to defer the motion until he had really been educated and reported back. He also promised that he would come and do a special update every month to the Facilities and HEI committees. I guess 15 other folks with a vote saw it as too little, too late like I did."

                    --Tracy Meints Fox