Chicago Weekend Fun!

The Hillside Landfill is the smelliest landfill in Chicago. It has been smelling up 290 in the area by the hillside strangler merge for about 2 years now. I drive by it at least twice a week and even with the windows on my car closed and the air conditioning system off, I still smell that stench of rotting garbage for about 3 minutes. It’s awful. Apparently it used to be a quarry (not unusual for this area, limestone is commonly mined) and was transitioned as a 55 acre landfill once all the mining was done and it hasn’t taken long to fill it up. (please comment if you know the opening date of the landfill)

They have a large banner out now which is viewable from the highway that says that the Hillside Landfill is closing in 2008. Great! What does that mean? Does it mean they will stop putting garbage in it then? Does it mean the smell will go away? Does it mean something to us who are driving by smelling this disgusting smell every day? Or is it just some kind of PR ploy to get us to stop complaining about it?

Apparently Lisa Madigan, the EPA and the State are suing the Allied Waste removal company that owned the landfill but went bankrupt after a deal to capture the methane gas and use it to generate electricity fell through. They then stopped maintaining it and running the systems that manage the smell several years ago. The management of a landfill seems to be about covering it with a layer of some kind of liner (plastic?) to contain the smell and piping the methane gas that is building from the rotting garbage from inside, up to the top where it is burned off of pipes or chimneys placed throughout the landfill. Then they top it with 3 feet of topsoil and try and plant grass and greenery on top. You can see an example of our past garbage dumping and burying along I-55 in Stickney between the LaGrange and the Cicero and Berwyn exits. (it’s the high hills across from the sewage treatment ponds, (yes that’s what that dark liquid is) on the west side of the highway. Apparently containing the waste removal and garbage containment of 9 million people in Chicagoland isn’t as easy as we thought.

With today’s world being increasingly throw-away and disposable I am surprised I only know of 3 landfills in the Chicago area. (there is another one (now closed) on the Naperville-Woodridge border by 75th street under a bunch of high power electrical lines, they built townhouses next door, ewww.)  When all 3 of these known landfills closed, where will all our trash go? It’s not like people are throwing away less these days? I can only find Onyx Waste removal’s landfills listed on the internet in Zion (who also has a lovely nuclear reactor which powers all the electricity for the Chicago Area) and Davis Junction, IL.  We see green initiatives being talked about all over the place today and see the movies about the planet dying, but it’s not like anything is really changing yet.  I think the surest way that people like you and me can ensure there isn’t another stinky 290 situation is to stop using and throwing away so much garbage.