Post by JB on Apr 3, 2008 6:55:07 GMT -6
D204 to release results of environmental study
Opponents say Metea site not safe
April 3, 2008
By Tim Waldorf twaldorf@scn1.com
The four-week wait will end Monday.
Indian Prairie School District 204's board will release results of the environmental studies undertaken on a portion of the Eola Road property, during a special meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday. The district hopes to build Metea Valley High School on the site.
The presentation will outline what the studies found and how any contamination they uncovered can be cleaned up, Superintendent Stephen Daeschner said.
In all likelihood, the presentation will not be followed by the finalization of the land purchase, he said.
District 204 has had the results of these studies since the board's March 10 meeting, but until this week it had not been able to secure permission from the various parties involved in the land purchase to release the results to the public.
However, officials have met with and asked questions of the consultants who performed the studies.
"The board has said, I think repeatedly, that we're very, very comfortable with what we've seen in there," said District 204 board President Mark Metzger. "The consultants don't see anything that alarms them in any way, and, as they've told us, what was found was found in extremely limited quantities and is regularly and easily remediated. So they don't anticipate any difficulties or problems whatsoever."
Critics concerned
District 204's critics have argued that, from an environmental standpoint, the Eola site is not safe, and they have suggested that this delay indicates the reports confirm their suspicions.
But school board member Curt Bradshaw said the wait has had more to do with the different priorities of the parties involved. One of those parties - Midwest Generation - is an international, multibillion-dollar corporation with an extensive bureaucratic network through which these results must filter before they're OK'd for release, he stressed.
"You can imagine this transaction isn't as high up on their priority list as it is ours," Bradshaw said.
Midwest Generation spokesman Charley Parnell did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Midwest Generation owns 37 of the selected school site's 87 acres, and until a year ago, it operated a peaker power plant on 17 of those acres in the northeast corner of the property. To allay environmental safety concerns and determine what, if any, work will need to be done to transform this portion of the site into a suitable location for a high school campus, the district commissioned a two-phase environmental study of that property. The first phase looked at historical data from the site and past property owners. The second phase looked for the presence of various kinds of chemical contamination in 96 different soil borings and ground water samplings.
What changed their minds?
The district also has assured residents that any cleanup of contamination on this portion of the property will meet the standards of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's voluntary site remediation program. But Neighborhood Schools for Our Children, a group of parents who have filed a lawsuit demanding that District 204 build Metea on the 80-acre site at 75th Street and Route 59 known as the Brach-Brodie property, wants the IEPA to approve the entire site because contaminants don't abide by property lines.
"So I'm going to be interested to see over how large of an area environmental testing was done, and I'm going to be looking to see if they were testing for the chemicals that you'd expect to find coming out of a power plant like this," said Shawn Collins, the attorney representing NSFOC.
But Collins' experience with reports of this sort is that they "raise as many questions as they answer," he said.
"The district has not answered the very fundamental question here of what does it see today about that site that has caused the district to change its mind about what it said two years ago," Collins said. "I haven't heard any answer to that question, and I don't expect that these environmental reports are going to shed any light on that."
While the reports may not answer this question, Metzger did explain the difference. He said the district only assumed the potential for students to be exposed to high levels of electromagnetic radiation would be high at the Eola site simply because of its proximity to high-voltage power lines to the north and east, as well as its proximity to the peaker plant that was operating there at the time. That peaker plant - "the biggest potential source of electromagnetic radiation at the site" - is now gone, and the district has hired professionals to measure EMF levels, and they've returned readings that are below even background levels.
Bradshaw backed up Metzger's claim, and added that nobody was eager to pursue a condemnation case against the property owner, St. John AME Church.
Bradshaw said once community members hear the details of these reports, they'll have a great sense of comfort moving forward.
"I can tell you I have reviewed the reports and have had the opportunity to discuss the results with out environmental consultants, and there's nothing there that concerns me," he said. "If we can't trust some of the nation's premier environmental consultants and the EPA, who can we trust? These firms haven't built their solid reputation on giving bad advice."
=====================================
What's a peaker plant?
A peaker power plant operated on the Eola site from June 1970 until a year ago. The plant was used to produce electricity when demand surpassed the area's capacity to provide it.
"The plant ran primarily on natural gas and due to the high cost of natural gas, that made the plant inefficient," said Charley Parnell, a spokesman for Midwest Generation, which purchased the plant that was on the site from Commonwealth Edison in 1999. "The plant did not run very often, only a handful of hours throughout the year. It was designed to give the system a boost and run primarily during the hottest summer days when the system is usually stretched."
eta - formatting, split out peaker insert
Opponents say Metea site not safe
April 3, 2008
By Tim Waldorf twaldorf@scn1.com
The four-week wait will end Monday.
Indian Prairie School District 204's board will release results of the environmental studies undertaken on a portion of the Eola Road property, during a special meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday. The district hopes to build Metea Valley High School on the site.
The presentation will outline what the studies found and how any contamination they uncovered can be cleaned up, Superintendent Stephen Daeschner said.
In all likelihood, the presentation will not be followed by the finalization of the land purchase, he said.
District 204 has had the results of these studies since the board's March 10 meeting, but until this week it had not been able to secure permission from the various parties involved in the land purchase to release the results to the public.
However, officials have met with and asked questions of the consultants who performed the studies.
"The board has said, I think repeatedly, that we're very, very comfortable with what we've seen in there," said District 204 board President Mark Metzger. "The consultants don't see anything that alarms them in any way, and, as they've told us, what was found was found in extremely limited quantities and is regularly and easily remediated. So they don't anticipate any difficulties or problems whatsoever."
Critics concerned
District 204's critics have argued that, from an environmental standpoint, the Eola site is not safe, and they have suggested that this delay indicates the reports confirm their suspicions.
But school board member Curt Bradshaw said the wait has had more to do with the different priorities of the parties involved. One of those parties - Midwest Generation - is an international, multibillion-dollar corporation with an extensive bureaucratic network through which these results must filter before they're OK'd for release, he stressed.
"You can imagine this transaction isn't as high up on their priority list as it is ours," Bradshaw said.
Midwest Generation spokesman Charley Parnell did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Midwest Generation owns 37 of the selected school site's 87 acres, and until a year ago, it operated a peaker power plant on 17 of those acres in the northeast corner of the property. To allay environmental safety concerns and determine what, if any, work will need to be done to transform this portion of the site into a suitable location for a high school campus, the district commissioned a two-phase environmental study of that property. The first phase looked at historical data from the site and past property owners. The second phase looked for the presence of various kinds of chemical contamination in 96 different soil borings and ground water samplings.
What changed their minds?
The district also has assured residents that any cleanup of contamination on this portion of the property will meet the standards of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's voluntary site remediation program. But Neighborhood Schools for Our Children, a group of parents who have filed a lawsuit demanding that District 204 build Metea on the 80-acre site at 75th Street and Route 59 known as the Brach-Brodie property, wants the IEPA to approve the entire site because contaminants don't abide by property lines.
"So I'm going to be interested to see over how large of an area environmental testing was done, and I'm going to be looking to see if they were testing for the chemicals that you'd expect to find coming out of a power plant like this," said Shawn Collins, the attorney representing NSFOC.
But Collins' experience with reports of this sort is that they "raise as many questions as they answer," he said.
"The district has not answered the very fundamental question here of what does it see today about that site that has caused the district to change its mind about what it said two years ago," Collins said. "I haven't heard any answer to that question, and I don't expect that these environmental reports are going to shed any light on that."
While the reports may not answer this question, Metzger did explain the difference. He said the district only assumed the potential for students to be exposed to high levels of electromagnetic radiation would be high at the Eola site simply because of its proximity to high-voltage power lines to the north and east, as well as its proximity to the peaker plant that was operating there at the time. That peaker plant - "the biggest potential source of electromagnetic radiation at the site" - is now gone, and the district has hired professionals to measure EMF levels, and they've returned readings that are below even background levels.
Bradshaw backed up Metzger's claim, and added that nobody was eager to pursue a condemnation case against the property owner, St. John AME Church.
Bradshaw said once community members hear the details of these reports, they'll have a great sense of comfort moving forward.
"I can tell you I have reviewed the reports and have had the opportunity to discuss the results with out environmental consultants, and there's nothing there that concerns me," he said. "If we can't trust some of the nation's premier environmental consultants and the EPA, who can we trust? These firms haven't built their solid reputation on giving bad advice."
=====================================
What's a peaker plant?
A peaker power plant operated on the Eola site from June 1970 until a year ago. The plant was used to produce electricity when demand surpassed the area's capacity to provide it.
"The plant ran primarily on natural gas and due to the high cost of natural gas, that made the plant inefficient," said Charley Parnell, a spokesman for Midwest Generation, which purchased the plant that was on the site from Commonwealth Edison in 1999. "The plant did not run very often, only a handful of hours throughout the year. It was designed to give the system a boost and run primarily during the hottest summer days when the system is usually stretched."
eta - formatting, split out peaker insert
