Evanston Hospital officials said Wednesday that cooperation between the hospital and various state and city agencies will enable its medical waste incinerator to be officially shut down by Friday, the city-mandated deadline.
The hospital also was able to locate parts needed to retrofit the burner as a gas-fired boiler — which would continue to provide the hospital with energy — faster than expected.
“Our ability to meet this date was facilitated by Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s request for expedited processing of the necessary permits by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency,” said Ray Grady, president of Evanston Hospital, in a press release Wednesday. “The timetable also was shortened by our success in locating, on the secondary market, the necessary equipment to make the conversion.”
MaryAnn Lando, a spokeswoman for Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, said the city acted quickly in granting the necessary zoning and logistical approval for the hospital to finish constructing an expanded loading dock required to truck out the hospital’s medical waste.
Lando told The Daily two weeks ago that she was “optimistic” that the incinerator would be shut down by the city’s deadline. The hospital has seen “continuing of that progress” in the past two weeks that will enable the unit to be closed permanently by Friday, she said.
“The important part of the story from our perspective is that … we are able to use the incinerator to meet our heat redundancy requirements,” she said.
Clare Kelly Delgado, an Evanston resident and leader in the campaign to shut down the incinerator, said she hoped the community activism directed toward closing the incinerator will help end the use of nearly a dozen other medical waste incinerators that dot the state.
“It took a community to mobilize in order to see this thing close and we’re very glad to know that we are no longer breathing the pollution from … an incinerator in the our neighborhood,” she said. “We hope this will set an example for the remaining on-site medical waste incinerators in our state.”
Delgado said she had been confident that the incinerator would be shut down on time, adding that the hospital wasn’t required to seek any permits to close it — only to make modifications. She also said it was her understanding that the incinerator had stopped burning late last week.
Lando, the hospital spokeswoman, said the unit has been shut down intermittently for testing purposes as modifications are made.
Evanston City Council banned medical waste incinerators from Evanston last month in response to a grassroots effort by residents surrounding the hospital. Residents said the incinerator, which has been operating for the past 15 years, posed health risks by releasing pollutants into the air.
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