3/24/15 Open Meetings Complaint about Committees

The leaders and Chair of the DeWitt County Board are trying to conduct all county business in the committees where it will receive no public scrutiny and no media attention because they are almost universally not attended.

This is one of the secretive practices that lead to the county approval of the PCB/MGP dumping at the Clinton Landfill.

In doing so I believe they are turning the committee meetings into illegal board meetings in violation of the Open Meetings Act.

I questioned this practice to the County Attorney's office and was ignored. I was then forced to go to the Il Attorney General with a complaint.

Here is the IL Attorney General's office's INITIAL RESPONSE to my complaint.

More to come........

3/24/15 Bloomington Joins Effort

One of the several efforts to stop the PCB dumping at the Clinton Landfill over the Mahomet Sole Source is an effort by a Champaign City organized multi-governmental coalition in the courts to force DeWitt County to hold the site-ing they illegally omitted in the initial permitting process.

In the last election the anti-PCB dumping folks lost control of the DeWitt County Board. The current board chair and a majority of the current board members are longtime proponents of the Clinton Landfill's plans.

Additionally:

• The DeWitt County government is absurdly wasteful with taxpayer funds - for instance they just purchased a building for the county animal shelter that their own architect had said was inappropriate for a county building. It's a pole building with untreated poles.
• There is serious talk about shutting down Clinton Power Plant which would be a huge blow to the tax base of DeWitt County.
• The Landfill is withholding fees for the municipal waste side of the landfill in an effort to strong arm DeWitt County into concessions about the PCB dumping. So far DeWitt County is talking about concessions.
• Clinton Marina (owned by DeWitt County) has been allowed to deteriorate for decades and now the IL Attorney General and the public are forcing very expensive long overdue maintenance.   

All this makes the DeWitt County Board extremely vulnerable to financial pressuring.

Because of documented illegal past DeWitt County Board activities in connection with the PCB dumping the Landfill will undoubtedly sue DeWitt County if they don't get their PCB permit.

The PCB dumping also represents a new source of revenue for DeWitt County government.

So the inefficient DeWitt County Board (already inclined to side with the Landfill) will be able to point to financial pressure and fear of being sued as reasons to permit the dumping if the site-ing is returned to them for approval.

The coalition realizes these things and more and is going to try to become an interested party in the site-ing process as is reflected in the following two stories.

3/23/15 Pantagraph story

3/24/15 Pantagraph story

DeWitt County protecting us from this irresponsible, dangerous threat to the Mahomet Sole Source Aquifer is far from a sure thing. A similarly constituted board with many of the same members defied public opinion in the initial, illegal approval. The effort of the coalition to intercede is critically important.

3/14/15 Update

There have been three very significant events recently in the past couple days.

(1.) The Sole Source designation petition by the Champaign County based Coalition of Local Governmental Agencies was approved by the US EPA. This only affects Federally funded projects so it has not direct effect on the Clinton Landfill/PCB dumping situation. It does provide future protection and was an excellent rallying point on the PCB/MGP issue.

(2. and 3.) Two identical Illinois bills which could (hopefully “will”) stop this travesty cleared committees and headed for the legislative floor for approval. They are:

HB 1326 sponsored by Representative Ammons

SB 1698 sponsored by Senator Bennett

They now need your support!   

12/18/14 Increased DeWitt County Board Transparency

It was not mentioned at the board meeting or publicized in any way but the DeWitt County Board has very secretively started posting recordings of not just the board meetings but the committee meetings as well. Plus they are posting agendas etc. of the committees which is not a legal requirement. This greatly increases the transparency of this organization.

This organization's misuse of the committee system and secrecy was a primary factor in the pending approval of Area Disposal's PCB/MGP Chemical Waste Unit at the Clinton Landfill over the Mahomet Aquifer so this is victory of sorts.

Reservations:

I suspect they felt forced to do this by exterior pressures and their motives are less than transparent.

I wonder how long it will last.

But it does represent increased transparency by the problematic body and that is clearly good!





  

Initial Post

This is going to be a positive only blog which I'm going to have to be careful to remember. There's so much negative about this mess that it's easy to over look the positive:

• They tired to do this quickly and quietly in 2009 and we've been holding them off for 5 years now.
• People have come and gone from the effort but the effort has been maintained.
• We are now much more likely to get this stopped than we were 5 years ago
• Unlike 5 years ago we now have governmental officials and attorneys involved on our side.
• We just had two resolution about this:
• Piatt County      96+% opposed
• DeWitt County 90+% opposed
• Terry Hoffman a Dewitt County Board member who was charged criminally in the most blatantly politically motivated criminal prosecution it has ever been my displeasure to witness has been exonerated.
• We've realized that there are numerous other problems with this landfill and are addressing many of those also.
• While I'm not impressed with the duplicitous nature of the timing and statements about the temporary hold put on this dumping the fact remains that there has been a temporary hold.
• This is the most widely known and universally opposed local issue I have ever heard of and I've knocked on about 2000 doors talking about this over the years. 
• The whole siting effort serves as an example of government in the country at it's worst but the coalition lead by Campaign serves as an example of government at it's best.
• Citizen involvement recently has been massive and enthusiastic. This is the major reason why we are making progress.