ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD
July
22, 1976
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS,
Complainant,
V.
NORTH SHORE SANITARY DISTRICT,
)
a municipal corporation,
)
)
PCB 74—223
Respondent;
)
PCB 74-229
)
(CONSOLIDATED)
CITY OF HIGHLAND PARK,
)
Complainant,
v.
NORTH SHORE SANITARY DISTRICT,
)
Respondent.
OPINION AND ORDER OF THE BOARD
(by Mr. Zeitlin):
The Board’s principal Opinion and Order in this matter was
entered on November
6,
1975.
The Board there found that Respondent
North Shore Sanitary District
(NSSD) had operated the Clavey Road
sewage treatment plant
(STP)
in such a manner as to have caused
serious odor pollution, in violation of Section
9(a)
of the
Environmental Protection Act
(Act).
In addition to other remedies,
paragraphs
3,
4 and 5 of the Board’s Order there required that the
parties perform certain actions, and
submit
certain reports,
to
allow the Board to arrive at a suitable remedy on the subject of
air pollution monitoring facilities at the Clavey Road plant.
After several delays, the City of Highland Park submitted its
report regarding monitoring
(hereinafter, the “City’s Report”)
on
March
19,
1976.
The NSSD’s Report regarding monitoring
(hereinafter,
the “NSSD Report”)
was submitted on April
28,
1976.
(No report was
ever filed by the People; nor was the People’s failure to so report
explained or otherwise commented upon.)
Pursuant to a Motion filed
June 14, 1976 by the City of Highland Park, all parties were allowed
an additional period until June 29,
1976, to submit further pleadings;
only Highland Park responded.
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Despite the Board’s request that the reports ordered in para-
graph
5 be better organized and more thorough than the record seen
up to that time
(November 6,
1975 Opinion and Order at 20),
the
record still fails to contain a single,
thorough description of the
proposed monitoring equipment at the Clavey Road plant.
We have
the attachments to the City’s Report, constituting design and
construction specifications, apparently taken from NSSD sources.
The NSSD Report provides little more,
giving only a cursory descrip-.
tion of the equipment proposed for control and monitoring at Clavey
Road
(NSSD Report,
Ex.
B).
The design specifications appended to the City’s Report are
incomplete,
in that they fail to specify the sampling locations,
etc.,
for the plant as a whole.
The Record generated at the earlier
hearings does not fully correct
this
deficiency
(e.g.,
R.
230-301).
The Exhibits appended to the NSSD Report raise as many questions
as
they answer.
Despite these inadequacies, we find that we are able to reach
a decision on the monitoring issue on the hearing Record and Reports
now before us.
We reach this decision reluctantly,
in light of the
paucity of information in the Record, but this matter has now been
before the Board for nearly two years and must be resolved.
Our decision on monitoring is based on answers or
——
more
importantly in some cases
——
the lack of answers to the following
questions:
1.
What were the causes of the odors at the
Clavey Road plant?
2.
What has been done to correct those causes?
3.
What will monitoring at the Clavey Road
plant accomplish to assure the Board and
the surrounding residents that the past
odor problems will not be repeated?
Causes.
Our November
6,
1975 Opinion in this case found the
odors at Clavey Road to be caused by both overloading of the plant
and mismanagement of the plant by
NSSD.
We also found as
a
contributing cause the construction and expansion taking place at
the plant, pursuant to League of Women Voters,
supra, and other
cases.
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Correction.
Testimony by Mr. Riddell,
(R.
228 et seq.),
along
with the NSSD Report, provides what information we have on this
subject.
The plant,
as noted in the November
6,
1975 Opinion,
has
been undergoing considerable expansion and other work to correct
the overloaded conditions at Clavey Road.
Included in that work
is
the construction of several air purification facilities.
These
include covering much of the plant,
ducting the exhaust gases from
the plant to several locations,
and the purification of those gases
through various control mechanisms,
including scrubbers, high
temperature afterburners, iron sponges and other devices.
The principal purpose of the air cleaning devices will be the
control
of hydrogen sulfide, H2S,
commonly known as
“rotten egg gas.”
The scrubbers in particular have been designed to remove this
constituent from the plant’s emissions, and will apparently serve
to accomplish this.
This should serve to eliminate part of the odor
problem complained
of by citizens,
(e.g.,
R.
30).
It will not, however, eliminate all of the odors present in
Clavey Road’s emissions.
Exhibit A to the NSSD Report shows clearly
that H2S removal will change the nature of the plant’s odors, instead
of eliminating it.
Although the resulting odor may be less unpleasant
than H2S,
it will be equally detectable.
The problem is further compounded because NSSD does not know
the chemical constituents of the odors which will remain after H2S
removal.
NSSD claims, however, that
these odors should not be
a
serious problem because:
1.
The emissions will be through a small
number of individual stacks subsequent to
I-12S
removal, such that the emissions should be dis-
persed high above ground before affecting the
surrounding residents.
2.
The odors should be diminished through
proper operation of the new plant facilities.
We agree that these compliance efforts should help considerably
to abate the past problems at Clavey Road.
Monitoring.
Highland Park originally asked for monitoring for
two reasons:
1.
to tie future problems directly to
the Clavey Road plant,
avoiding the problems
of proof seen in our November
6,
1975 Opinion
in this case,
such that the times and causes of
odor nuisances from the plant can be related;
and,
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2.
to assist all interested parties,
including the City, NSSD and this Board in
resolving any future problems, as well as any
continuing ones.
Highland Park also noted,
(Ex.
5),
that monitoring had been
required by the Lake County Circuit Court.
NSSD’s response in this regard, at hearing,
in its Brief
in
this case and
in the Report now before us, has uniformly been in
opposition.
In fact,
the NSSD Report
is primarily a brief on the
issue of this Board’s jurisdiction and authority to enter specific
abatement orders.
NSSD Report at
4.
None of the NSSD arguments are persuasive.
The Act provides
specifically that the Board may enter the appropriate, specific
abatement orders that an individual pollution problem demands.
Ill.
Rev. Stat.,
Ch.
111—1/2,
§33
(1975).
It would serve no purpose
to cite examples of such orders; many of the orders entered by the
Board in enforcement cases would serve.
As to NSSD’s characterization of the Board’s function,
to
achieve the statewide freedom from pollution which the Act mandates
the Board must in individual cases take whatever actions are neces-
sary for the achievement of that goal.
Where an individual polluter
has demonstrated an inability to abate the pollution which it causes,
the Board can and must order such specific actions as are necessary
to achieve abatement.
Where the polluter’s record indicates that a
simple “cease and desist” order
is ineffective, we must reluctantly
go beyond such an order.
NSSD’s analogies to “camel
—
a horse designed by committee,”
and “too many cooks
.
.
.‘
to describe its problems at the Clavey
Road plant, are not appropriate
in this instance.
Our only comment
on this issue is that NSSD’s record before the Board in this matter
indicates that problems would not have arisen had NSSD performed
its own function in a timely and adequate manner.
Monitoring facilities at the Clavey Road plant should,
if
properly designed, provide NSSD with a means of monitoring
its own
problems and correcting them and,
thus, correcting those past
problems.
To some extent,
this is precisely what the monitoring
now proposed by NSSD will do.
The monitors shown in the NSSD Report
will,
by sampling air immediately before and after many of the H2S
removal devices, provide an ongoing record of the efficiency of these
devices.
While Highland Park accepts the majority of NSSD’s monitoring
proposals,
for just those reasons, they also wish the following
additions:
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1.
The H2S monitors in certain areas
should be increased to allow continuous recording
of the performance of the scrubbers,
etc.; and,
2.
Perimeter monitors should be required,
to show the effect of plant operations in general,
and to record any leaks,
etc., which would not be
recorded by monitors in the area of the control
devices.
We do not feel,
in light of the uncertainties discussed above,
that we would be able to justify these requested additions to the
proposed monitoring system.
We shall instead require that NSSD
comply with the monitoring program outlined in Exhibit B
in its
Report.
We are particularly concerned about the fact that the chemical
constituents of those odors which the plant may release even with
the H2S removal equipment working are not known.
The perimeter
monitoring additions requested by the City would be further H25
monitors, which would be inadequate for the following reasons:
1.
They would record only gross errors,
such as major leaks or scrubber breakdowns,
at
Clavey Road.
2.
They would, assuming normal operations,
not record any of the odors likely to be present.
The continuous monitors requested by the City for certain of
the scrubbers have,
likewise, not been justified.
Because the citizen
testimony taken at the first hearing in this matter,
(R.
1—144),
indicated that odor problems at Clavey Road tend to be of relatively
long duration,
a two—hour recording cycle for the scrubber monitors
should suffice.
Without knowledge of the odor constituents which are likely
to be present, we can reach no other decision,
While we hope that
the many new facilities at Clavey Road will prevent recurrence of
the odor problems there, we nonetheless know that
if they should
recur,
the senses of the surrounding residents will provide an
adequate monitor.
Nor do we feel that further exploration of the problem, with
further reporting by the parties, would provide
a solution.
At the
time of the hearings in this matter, many of the new facilities
at
Clavey Road had not been completed.
It appears from the parties’
Reports that construction at Clavey Road
is still continuing.
We
therefore feel that such further investigation and reporting would
probably be futile until “normal” plant operations have begun.
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We shall, however, require that NSSD maintain all of its
monitoring records,
and make these records available for reasonable
inspection by Highland Park.
Highland Park’s continuing interest
in NSSD’s performance at Clavey Road has, and should continue to
provide an impetus toward complete abatement of the odor problem.
The City’s request for access to NSSD’s bids on the monitoring
equipment, with participation in the contracting process, must be
denied.
We cannot envision a basis for such participation.
Finally,
we note that our Order here on the subject of monitoring
in no way is intended to infringe upon or affect the Order of the
Circuit Court shown in Exhibit
5 and discussed
in our Nov.
6,
1975
Opinion and Order.
We have no such authority.
This Opinion constitutes the findings of fact and conclusions
of law of the Board in this matter.
ORDER
IT
IS THE ORDER OF THE POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD that:
1.
Respondent North Shore Sanitary District comply with the
monitoring program outlined in Exhibit B in its Report in this
matter filed April
28,
1976.
2.
All monitoring reports obtained pursuant to that program
shall be made available to Complainant City of Highland Park on a
reasonable basis during normal working hours, and may be copied by
Complainant City of Highland Park at its own expense.
3.
Respondent North Shore Sanitary District shall,
in addition
to the above,
comply with all monitoring and/or reporting requirements
of this Board’s Regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency,
and
any relevant permits for the Clavey Road Sewage Treatment Plant.
I,
Christan L.
Moffett, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution
Control Board, hereby certif
th
above Opinion and Order we e
adopted on the ~~I’~Aday of
_________,
1976, by a vote of
-
C ristan
L. Mo fett
rk
Illinois Pollution
ol Board
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