ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD

August 8, 1974

CITY OF PLANO,

Petitioner,

vs,

)

PCB 74~l62

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY,

Respondent~

OPINION AND ORDER OF THE BOARD

(by

Mr~Henss):

City of Piano filed its Petition for Variance seeking relief

from the Open Burning Regulations for the open burning of an

accumulation of landscape waste~ The Board determined this

Petition to be inadequate and ordered City of Piano to submit

additional information on the exact site of the proposed burhing,

location of nearest residences, reasons for not renting or

purchasing an air curtain destructor and reasons for not disposing

of the landscape waste by landfill or chipping~ Petitioner~s

response was timely filed but still inadequate~

Petitioner collects landscape waste as part

of

its municipal

refuse collection operation at the rate of about four dump~truck

loads per monthS Prior to adoption of the Open Burning Regulations,

Petitioner disposed of these wastes by periodic open burningS

Since adoption of the Open Burning Regulations Pstitioner has

allowed the landscape waste to accumulate on property owned by the

City. The proposed burning site is located in the sodiheast part

of Piano adjacent to a sewage treatment plant~ There are resi~

dences located about 500 feet to the north and southeast of the

proposed burning site,

No information is presented as to how much material PetItioner

intends to burn nor are we provided with any estimates of the

quantity of contaminants that will be generated by the burning~

If Petitioner has allowed the landscape waste materials to

accumulate since the adoption of the Open Burning Regulation as

the Agency

claims,

the site could

have accumulated as

much

as

136

dump-truck loads~ However, the Agency estimates that the site now

has

uover 20~truckloads of landscape wasteS It would seem that

either the

Agency estimate

is extremely

low or

Petitioner has

disposed of about 116 truckloads of the landscape waste by some

other method,

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Petitioner estimates

the purchase cost of an air curtain

destructor

to

be about

$10,000.

Funds for purchase of the

device have not been appropriated by the City. Petitioner

states that the air curtain destructor Hcannot be rented~.

Since burning

of

the waste would occur only about once per

month, Petitioner believes the purchase of an air curtain

des-

tructor

would

be an excessive and unwise investment of the

taxpayer~smoney.

Board Procedural Rule 401(a) (vii) and (a) (viii) require

Petitioner to provide the Board with a time schedule for bringing

the activity into compliance and a detailed description of the

proposed compliance program. Petitioner did not submit this

information and also failed to indicate for what length of time

the

variance would be required.

Petitioner states that it has instructed its City Manager

to prepare an application for a landfill operation, but that

this

variance needed for the interim period preceding issuance

of

any permit:.

The

Agency states that it has not yet received any

applicatio: for a landfill permit from Petitioner. Obviously

the City

of

Piano must be disposing of other municipal waste at

some location. We are not told why the landscape waste Petitioner

now

wants

to

burn cannot be reduced by a chipper and disposed

of

at the landfill.

The Board must deny this variance because the information

presented is simply too vague. Petitioner was provided an

opportunity to supplement its original variance with required

information and failed to do so. It would appear Petitioner seeks

to burn the

collected landscapewaste once each month ad infinitum

under protection of a variance

with

no plan~to ever bring the

activity into compliance. This

we

cannot authorize.

ORDER

It is the Order of the Pollution Control Board that the request

for variance by the City of PIano to open burn landscape waste is

hereby denied without prejudice.

I, Christen L. Moffett, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control

Board, hereby certify the bove Opinion and Order

was

adopted

this ~

day of~

1974 by a vote of

4

to ~

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