Forest Preserve Becomes Dumping Ground

Rusty rebar and concrete, asphalt, bricks, oil drums, sheets of plastic: what is this, a garbage dump? No, it's the Cook County Forest Preserve.

Like some sort of bizarre scavenger hunt, you won't believe what you can pull out of the ground here at Miller Meadow, a parcel of forest preserve property tucked in between First Avenue and the Des Plaines River. And what has conservation groups steaming is that this isn't an accident. The county has sanctioned the dumping of hundreds of thousands of tons of construction fill since 2003.

Mary Dye lives nearby and has been using Miller Meadow for fifteen years.

"Well it's just insane. It's criminal. This is a forest preserve. And for it to be used as a dumpsite, it's just wrong," said Dye.

The area used to look like wetlands with ponds and fish. And today, the area looks much different. It’s twenty to thirty feet high, with construction material underneath, covered with a thin layer of dirt. And that dirt is actually a bio-solid produced by the Water Reclamation District, essentially processed human waste. It’s running off the hill and into water that feeds into the nearby Des Plaines River. In the 1990's, two deep tunnel shafts sunk on the site and left large piles of stone to be cleaned up. According to contracts, the district allowed a construction company to dump a couple feet of fill in return for removing the stone for free.

But conservationists can't understand how two feet turned into thirty feet. In a statement, a forest preserve spokesman said the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has inspected the site and found no problems with the water. They claimed that, "as evidenced by our entire 68,000 acres of open space, we take our commitment to protect the flora and fauna seriously, and shall remain tireless in our efforts to restore this site."

But for now, it's more garbage than garden.