Dumke updates on Chicago's Toxic Dirt Ordinance

Chicago Reader: Soil and rubble, toil and trouble
by Mick Dumke on May 13th 2009 - 7:34 a.m.

Virginia Rugai, chair of the City Council’s energy and environment committee, wanted to clarify an important point for the record Tuesday before aldermen began reviewing a proposal to allow the reuse of soil and rubble dug up in city construction projects.

While it was true the measure had been tabled three times before, and while it was true that its vehement opponents on all sides of the political spectrum had said all sorts of bad things about it (dubbing it “the toxic dirt ordinance”), and while it was true that some of those opponents had bombarded members of the committee with automated phone calls, Rugai insisted that delays in passing the proposal had nothing to do with political pressure, as a certain unnamed reporter had written.

Rugai said that last month she had decided on her accord that the plan needed a fourth round of revisions in order to satisfy her colleagues and make sure community leaders across Chicago wouldn’t be freaked out or angry that the council had passed something that critics dubbed—quite incorrectly, mind you—“the toxic dirt ordinance.”

“I had decided to hold this long before our offices received hundreds of robocalls using inflammatory language,” she declared. “I’d asked for revisions long before those calls came. I just wanted to make a note of that.”
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Dumke:The latest dirt on the soil and rubble ordinance

From the Chicago Reader:

On the face of it, at least, it seemed like a straightforward, sensible idea: Chicago would pass a law to make it easier to reuse soil and rubble dug up during construction projects so it doesn’t have to be trucked to dumps hours away. The plan, proposed by city officials three months ago, would cut greenhouse gas emissions, preserve precious landfill space, and potentially lower the time and cost of construction work.

But instead of sailing through the City Council in the manner of so many other initiatives advanced by the Daley administration, the soil and rubble reuse ordinance has been attacked by an unusual coalition of environmentalists and waste haulers, greeted with skepticism by embattled aldermen, and repeatedly pulled off the table for retooling by city officials.

They’re going to try again next week.
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Kim Wasserman, LVEJO’s executive director, said environmentalists were initially wary because the city didn’t solicit their input before drafting the proposal. When they finally got a chance to review it, its language about how exactly the testing would be done seemed so vague and imprecise—a draft of the legislation said initial screening would consist of checking to see if the soil exhibits “visual or olfactory signs of impact”— that it set off additional “alarm bells.”

“They keep saying we’re in new territory and we’re setting a precedent, but if we are, we need to make damn sure it’s safe,” Wasserman said.
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