In fact, according to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, because the city’s waste processing equipment is experiencing some “digesting” problems as it goes through upgrades, it smells worse than most.
And no one knows that more than Dave Patush, the neighbor whose nose is still reeling after 1,300 tons of Naperville sludge were dumped in a field near his Oswego home right before Christmas.
Even though the muck was retrieved 36 hours later, the IEPA hit the city of Naperville with a couple of violations. But Patush insists nothing about how this all went down smells right, including the fact Kendall County had no idea when and where sludge was being applied to its fields.
“They didn’t think it was a big deal, that it happens all the time,” he said of the feedback he received from the county. “The fact Kendall County is not responsible for the land within Kendall County is mind-blowing.”
The problem started on Dec. 23 when Stewart Spreading of Sheridan began dumping 117 truckloads of Naperville’s processed sewage on the field next to Patush’s property on Collins Road.
“My car smelled so bad I couldn’t even drive it,” he said of the odor that permeated his land, his home, even his garage.
Spreading city waste into rural fields is a popular IEPA program. More than 300,000 tons of sludge a year go on Illinois fields. Municipalities get rid of their bio-solids, farmers get great fertilizer — and everyone is happy. Almost everyone.
As the “black gold” crossed the berm onto his property and seeped into his pond, Patush raised such a stink that Naperville ordered the trucks to return and pick up as much sludge as possible. By morning, most of it had disappeared.
But not Patush’s concerns.
After confronting Kendall County, Patush was disturbed the County Board pays so little attention to these bio-waste applications. Turns out, even though the IEPA regulates sludge disposal and monitors its content, it leaves most of the when and where to municipalities and their spreaders.
Several experts admitted that, as this program continues to grow, more local monitoring may be needed. Some counties — LaSalle, Lake and McHenry, to name a few — ask to be notified, said IEPA environmental protection specialist Jeff Hutton, but Kane and Kendall are not among them.
Steve Curatti, Kendall’s director of environmental health, says the county does encourage spreaders to let his office know about an application, but it’s not mandatory.
“We’ve never really had a problem before,” he added. “This was a highly unusual situation.”
That’s because the optimal spreading time is a nice dry fall day. But we didn’t have much of nice or dry last year, so there was a limited number of empty farm fields — and only a small window to apply the sludge.
The result? Humongous piles of really smelly bio-waste at Naperville’s plant.
The IEPA’s Hutton says by the end of December the city was “desperate” to get rid of the backup — and “could have used better judgment” in choosing a day to unload.
When a strong rain those few days before Christmas fell onto a hard, unforgiving ground, a perfect storm (of sludge) was unleashed.
Michelle Stewart defended her company’s decision to get rid of the waste in late December, calling the rain “unexpected.” But the IEPA disagreed and proceeded to cite both Naperville and Stewart with violations for spreading in inclement weather and too close to waterways.
Naperville, admitting to a bad judgment call, is obviously embarrassed by the stink it created. And based on this experience, the city is implementing stricter procedures both internally as well as in its land application contracts, said city spokesman Nadja Lalvani.
In the meantime, all that really stinky sludge is still sitting around.
“We’re running out of room,” lamented Jim Holzapfel, assistant director of public works.
The plan: truck the muck to landfills until a field is available.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
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Driving to school. It was the beginning of my senior year of high school. I live in CA, so since I never turned on the tv when I was getting ready that morning, I didn’t hear about it until I had my radio on in my car. Then my first class had it on tv, and that’s all we watched during that class.
The company lost thier contract with naperville a few months later