'
November
30E4E ivED
To: The Illinois Pollution Control Board Case #08-25
CLERK
S OFFICE
From: Tom Edwards/River
Rescue,
902 W. Moss Ave, Peoria, IL 61606
DEC
TESTIMONY:
00F311.71NOIS7
It is a flagrant travesty of truth to claim Peoria Disposal Co. is the "generaill' berol Board
toxic wastes it takes in at its hazardous waste dump rather than the "disposer" of them.
It heaps these wastes on top of a hill built with years of previous dumpings, which has (D
already become the highest hill in its vicinity. Years later PDC is to cover this
homongous heap of poisonous materials with a layer of dirt.
PDC takes in much of the nation's most toxic wastes from an untold number of businesses
and cities of, so far, 15 states besides Illinois They are the actual "generators" who must
find a place to get rid of it. So they truck it to PDC's dump site, the only one from
Indiana to the Rocky Mts. (Illinois is one of 13 states that still have a toxic waste landfill.)
The federal-state EPA permit allows 843 hazardous chemicals to be taken to PDC's dump
site -- chemicals that are deemed too toxic to be allowed in regular city trash "landfills."
By adding them to its mountainous toxic waste disposal site, PDC wants the court to rule
it is the "generator" of the wastes it receives. By being re-classified as the "generator" of
the wastes rather than the "disposer," PDC would bypass having to get a new permit from
Peoria County to operate (which the county already denied 18 months ago).
PDC says it "treats" some of its waste, and puts various amounts "out to cure." But:
--
The so-called "treatment" is simply an obfuscatory term for adding a
non-hardening form of cement, or clay, to keep the mostly light, loose, even fluffy waste
materials (as it comes in) from, literally, blowing away, or becoming a toxic quagmire..
--
And leaving quantities of waste "out to cure" for a time is actually just leaving it
more exposed to the air to expedite volatilization (evaporation) of chemical constituents-
contaminants away from the PDC dump -- but into the air that Peorians breathe. And the
bulk of the 843 chemicals the EPA permit allows are volatile as well as toxic.
PDC's claim that it becomes the "generator" of these wastes by disposing of them in a
landfill lacks any merit. Nor are any products for commerce produced.
-$ Two foremost factors regarding any consideration of the PDC toxic waste landfill are:
a) it sits immediately above the aquifer from which most of the Peoria area water supply
is drawn;
b)
it immediately adjoins and is directly upwind of the city and the air its
citizens breathe. On both counts, IT IS THE ONLY ACTIVE TOXIC WASTE
LANDFILL IN THE NATION SO SITUATED, records show.
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