The smell, like sour milk and diapers, hits passersby from blocks away. Then the roar of grinding metal. Then the sight of heaps of trash, mere feet from the nearest condominiums. Just four streets over from Evanston Township High School, across from a public park, the Veolia waste transfer site is working through its daily 520 tons of garbage.
Neighbors of the facility at 1711 Church St. say they’ve been complaining about its operating practices for decades. Its odor chokes the air on summer days. Garbage escapes into the streets. And the nearest homes are close enough to touch the dump’s fence from their windows – hardly the 800-foot distance now mandated by law.
If the site’s owners applied for a permit today, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency officials say, the agency likely would not grant one. But because the site was licensed in 1984, it is exempt from updated environmental regulations.
Since the IEPA controls Veolia’s permit, Evanston officials have limited options for addressing residents’ grievances. But on July 14, the city issued the site its first odor fine in at least 10 years, raising hopes among Veolia’s critics that change, and not just the stench of rotting garbage, is in the air.
“Dirty, filthy garbage”
When developer Muffy McAuley bought a set of commercial buildings at Church Street and Darrow Avenue, she knew they bordered a waste transfer site, she said. But Veolia assured her and other neighbors that the company was working to lessen its impact on the area. In a 2000 to 2003 plan for improving Evanston’s West Side, Veolia said it would soon construct an enclosed building to contain its waste.
Instead, Veolia built a “tin shed” resembling a carport, with one side wide open, McAuley said. The area’s hygiene has not improved at all.
“You can feel it in your eyes, you can feel it when you breathe, you can see the particulate matter in the air half the time,” McAuley said. “It is an unending stream of dirty, filthy garbage.”
Veolia community relations manager Melanie Williams said the IEPA has found the facility compliant with its regulations. The company does what it can to mitigate the smell and noise.
“Our goal is to be a good neighbor,” Williams said.
According to documents posted on a city website about the waste transfer site, complaints like McAuley’s have been circulating for years. In 2001, a neighbor of the facility described “huge mountains of uncovered garbage … rotting in the sun.” In 2007, someone wrote to the IEPA about “filthy, malodorous trucks” entering and leaving the site. And in 2009, a landscaping crew working nearby became ill due to “the acrid, biting odor.”
The 3.7-acre waste transfer site was never meant to handle the amount of garbage it processes today, said Tanya Noble, head of Evanston Citizens for Environmental Justice, a group founded in February to advocate the dump’s closure. The facility started as a family-owned business but was purchased by Veolia Environmental Services, a $15-billion corporation, in 1984. It now takes in trash from around the North Shore, mostly from outside Evanston.
Some of the neighbors Noble has spoken to have been decrying the site for 50 years, she said. But until recently, no government officials had taken action against Veolia.
Raising a stink
Realizing Veolia would not address its hygiene issues to her satisfaction, McAuley reached out to Evanston leaders. She pointed out the odor and noise from the dump violated the city’s laws. Evanston’s nuisance ordinance makes creating “such an offensive smell as may taint the air and render it unwholesome or disagreeable to the neighborhood” punishable by a $750 fine.
But Evanston officials told her they could do nothing, McAuley said. Only the IEPA has the power to grant and revoke waste transfer permits in Illinois.
Most Evanston officials declined to be interviewed for this story, saying they could not comment on ongoing legal issues. Ald. Delores Holmes (5th), whose ward borders the dump, said only that she knows neighbors have called the city about the smell.
So McAuley began researching the IEPA’s guidelines. She found several the site seemed to be violating, including one requiring waste transfer stations built in Cook County to be at least 800 feet from the nearest residence.
With the information she had gathered, McAuley approached IEPA agents. But they too said their hands were tied. As long as the facility remains in compliance with the license it was issued in 1984, the IEPA cannot charge it with any violations.
“It’s like saying, ‘OK, we know lead-based paint causes catastrophic health problems for children, but those places that still have lead-based paint, it’s okay,'” McAuley said.
Noble got a similar reaction when she met with IEPA officials in Springfield recently, she said. The officials told her no waste transfer site in Illinois has ever had its permit revoked. They also said they did not have the funds to study the Evanston site’s potential environmental hazards.
“No one actually can answer the question, ‘What kind of environmental impact is this having on the city?'” Noble said.
IEPA permitting official Sallie Flynn confirmed Veolia does not have to apply for permit renewal at the Evanston site. The company has modified the facility several times, and on those occasions it has had to justify the changes, she said.
Due to the facility’s proximity to residential buildings, “if they applied today, they might not get a permit,” Flynn said. But regulations in 1984 were much more lenient.
Only once in the past decade has the IEPA found the site in violation of its license, according to the city’s website about the facility. In August 2007, an inspector discovered workers had stored trash in open dumpsters for multiple days, violating the requirement that waste stored overnight be in closed containers. The inspector also reported odor problems.
But a subsequent inspection found no issues, so Veolia was not prosecuted.
Cleaning up their act
Despite a history of disappointing responses from officials, both McAuley and Noble said recent events have given them hope.
Since November, Evanston Health Department employee Ashley McIlwee has been monitoring the Veolia site to ensure it remains compliant with city codes. In December and January, she visited every few days, patrolling the perimeter.
McIlwee declined to be interviewed for this story. But on July 14, she handed the facility’s owners the first fine they have received from the city in at least 10 years, according to city documents.
To Noble, the $625 charge for odor problems indicates the city is taking her group seriously.
“We finally feel like someone’s listening,” Noble said.
Veolia plans to contest the fine, Williams said. The company also has plans of its own to improve conditions for neighborhood residents. In the fall, it will plant 20 to 30 pines between the dump and nearby condos. Veolia representatives continue to negotiate with the city, she said.
While Veolia sows trees, Citizens for Environmental Justice will be working with Northwestern’s Brady Scholars to complete an environmental impact study of the trash facility, Noble said. She is particularly excited for this collaboration because she has been told the University is one of the dump’s heaviest users, she said. She said she hopes this will be a turning point for NU.
McAuley said she does not see Veolia as “an evil company.” But she too feels validated by the fine, she said.
“We’re just looking for an even playing field,” she said.
