In the gaming world, a player caught cheating, using derogatory language, or other equally bad behavior will be “permabanned” or permanently banned from using the site where the bad behavior occurred. Well, that is exactly what the DeWitt count board did with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and MGP (manufactured-gas-plant) wastes. On April 23, 2015, the DeWitt county board voted to approve a settlement agreement with the owners of Clinton Landfill (near Clinton, IL) that keeps PCBs and MGP wastes out of the landfill. This ends a 7-year dispute between the landfill owners and groups opposed to PCB disposal there. Two articles from The News-Gazette sum up the happenings before and after the board vote.
Before the ban on PCBs and MGP wastes in the landfill, the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) hosted a one day workshop on “PCBs and their Impact in Illinois” to assess PCB disposal problems and solutions. Find out more about PCBs and watch the videos from the workshop.
In addition to the workshop, the Prairie Research Institute recently produced a document on PCBs titled, “An Updated Look at PCBs,” which contains a summary and recommendations about PCB disposal, a review of how PCBs are a persistent pollutant, and a literature review of remediation technologies for PCBs and manufactured-gas-plant wastes.