ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD
    November 29, 1990
    COMMONWEALTH EDISON COMPANY,
    )
    ZION POWER STATION,
    )
    Petitioner,
    PCB
    90—223
    V.
    )
    (Provisional Variance)
    ILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL
    PROTECTION AGENCY,
    Respondent.
    DISSENTING OPINION (by J.D. Dumelle):
    The oil being discharged to Lake Michigan under this variance
    grant could have easily been kept out of this great inland pristine
    sea. All that Edison had to do would have been to lease three
    12,000 gallon tank trucks. By filling one every two hours with one
    in reserve and one in transit to nearby sewage treatment plants, all
    oil discharges to the Lake would have been eliminated. Sewage
    plants at North Chicago, and at Waukegan pump to Gurnee which
    discharges to the Des Plaines River and eventually to the Gulf of
    Mexico.
    The permit,as revised7now allows up to 75 mg/i of oil and
    grease for 120,000 gallons a day for 45 days. That comes to 12.5
    gallons of oil a day and 562.5 gallons of oil over the 45—day period
    neglecting any amount captured by the oil booms. There are 42
    gallons of oil in a standard barrel. Thus, some 13.15 barrels of
    oil will now unnecessarily flow into Lake Michigan, a major drinking
    water supply for millions of people in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana,
    and Michigan.
    But what is 13 barrels of oil in Lake Michigan? The best-
    selling publication “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth~
    by the Earthworks Group states “A single quart of motor oil can
    pollute 250,000 gallons of drinking water.” (p. 52). The 13 barrels
    of oil to be discharged under this variance contain 2,250 quarts.
    Thus this grant will pollute 2,250 (250,000)
    =
    562,500,000 gallons
    of Lake Michigan water. Are we not birds fouling our own nest?
    The majority, in discussion, indicated that legally the Board
    could only blindly ratify the IEPA’s recommendation. But the
    majority did not analyze Section 35(b) of the Environmental
    Protection Act in conjunction with Section 36(a). Section 36(a)
    states that:
    in granting a variance the Board may impose such
    conditions as the policies of this Act require.
    116—335
    The Board, through the 10 years or so that Section 35(b) has
    existed, has read the mandatory approval of provisional variances
    apart from Section 36(a). But Section 36(a) dates to the 1970
    enactment of the Act. It has always been there and the Legislature
    knew that when it enacted Section 35(b).
    Put another way, a plain reading of the Act would have allowed
    the Board to impose conditions upon Edison. At the very least the
    oil booms offered by Edison should have been required by IEPA in its
    recommendation or added by the Board in its oversight function.
    Provisional variances, with only two days allowed by law to the
    Board for decision, obviously do not have any public input. Here,
    where more than a half billion gallons of Lake Michigan water will
    be polluted, is a situation crying out for public input and for
    Board protection of a Great Lake.
    2~
    ~
    /
    Jacob D. Dumelle, P.E.
    -
    /
    LCDR-CEC-USNR (Ret)
    /
    Board Member
    I, Dorothy M. Gunn, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control
    Board, hereby certify that the abpve Dissenting Opinion was filed on
    the
    _________________
    day of
    ~
    ,
    1990.
    Dorothy M./~unn, Cler
    Illinois ~llution Control Board
    116—336

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