Landfill Truths

One of my first blogs published 8/06/04 was titled “Conceptions, misconceptions, perceptions, truths, subtle falsehoods and outright lies”. Truths have been hard to come by from the opponents of landfill expansion and some Peoria County Board members. Yesterday I asked DeWayne Bartels of the Peoria Times-Observer to send me copy of a reprint of an editorial printed in the Observer dated 2/22/05.

Here it is: “The toxic waste landfill on Peoria’s outskirts is silent but it’s critics are not. In recent months critics of the landfill’s expansion, now under consideration by the Peoria County Board, have been vocal at county board, city council and even school board meetings. We applaud the critics for getting involved and speaking out. Their passion is evident.

Their credibility however is not. And, the fault for that lies with no one but the critics themselves. Tom Edwards has accused the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency of LYING in a letter they wrote to him in on September 232, 2004. In that letter the IEPA took exception with some of Edwards’ assertions about the landfill. Edwards says the IEPA lied in the letter, but does not say where they lied in the letter, or offer an explanation as to why he felt they lied.

And then last week, Joyce Blumenshine, a member of the Sierra Club chapter, spoke before the Peoria City Council adding more information to the argument against the landfill’s expansion. Blumenshine, in an address to the City Council read from a Novemeber 8, 1977 (almost 30 years ago) memo about the landfill. Blumenshine offered some information to the argument against the landfill’s expansion. Blumenshine read, in part, “The liquid separation and the spraying scheme appears to have little merit as it would only aggravate current problems at the site. The waste isolation trench plan, on the other hand, appears to be a vast improvement over special waste handling methods at this site…” Then Blumenshine read some more critical paragraphs contained in the letter. These ellipse between the paragraphs Blumenshine read are worthy of looking at. Blumenshine left out in her reading the one sentence that separates the two columns of criticism. That sentence reads, “There may be some problems with monitoring the construction of these special waste encapsulation areas, but on the whole, the idea appears sound.”

Because that sentence was purposely left out by Joyce Blumenshine what was presented to the public was a slanted view of the IPEA’s view of the PDC’s operation at that time, a critical view, a view that fits the purposes of the critics.

The landfill expansion critics have valid reasons to be concerned. (I agree and always have) But why they chose to play games with IPEA letters is a question the public deserves to have answered by these critics”.

On my next blog the letter to Mr. Edwards from the IPEA will be printed that Edwards along with Blumenshine, deliberately---- (you fill in the proper word)

Please read my next blog.