In a surprisingly close vote that wasn’t taken until after an 80-minute closed session, the Kendall County Board voted to deny Waste Management’s second attempt to site a landfill in the southern portion of the county.
The vote was 6 to 4, approving a resolution to deny the proposed Willow Run Landfill, which was being presented by Waste Management and Kendall Land and Cattle, LLC. The motion was made by Board member Bob Davidson, and fellow board members John Church, Bill Wykes, Jeff Wehrli, Pam Parr, and Kay Hatcher voted along with Davidson’s motion.
Board members who voted against the motion to deny were Anne Vickery, Nancy Martin, Jessie Haferichter and John Purcell.
Wehrli summed up the verdict by saying, “The decision of the board is a board decision. We move on, and we move on as a board.”
Purcell said he disagreed with Waste Management’s proposal, but had problems with the wording of the resolution, so he simply voted against the resolution, and added, “No, I did not support the application as it was submitted.”
This was the second attempt by Waste Management, which scaled down the proposal to a 134-acre solid waste facility that was also smaller in height than the original 2007 proposal. But in all likelihood, the proposal failed because it was viewed as not meeting criteria to protect the public health, safety and welfare.
One week earlier, the hearing officer, Patrick Kinnally, who oversaw the public hearing process, appeared before the Kendall Board in a special meeting and recommended that the Board turn down the application. Kinnally said the testimony during the hearings failed to convince him that Waste Management meets county standards for health, safety, welfare and location.
Kinnally said Waste Management provided testimony about landfills in other places, but nothing about Kendall County. The county’s criteria, he said, “Is about our county’s location, not about location anywhere else.”
What’s next?
According to Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis, participants in the hearing process now have 35 days to file an appeal with the Illinois Pollution Control Board (IPCB). If an appeal is filed and IPCB hears the case, that Board’s decision can then be appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court, a process Weis said, that could take two to three years.
Such is the case with another landfill being proposed within the City of Yorkville. That landfill, being presented by Fox Moraine, LLC, was originally denied by the Yorkville City Council in May 2007, and has been appealed to the IPCB. A three-day hearing, scheduled for December, may be delayed due to health reasons that affect one of the principle participants in the hearing. If the IPCB grants the delay, the hearing may be rescheduled for February or March, marking the two-year anniversary of Fox Moraine’s first public hearing.
