A hearing date has been set for a lawsuit filed with the Illinois Pollution Control Board against the City of LaSalle by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office for continuous violations at the LaSalle wastewater treatment plant.
The hearing will take place on Feb 29, 2024, 10:00 am, at the Ottawa Downtown Courthouse, 119 West Madison St., Ottawa, Illinois 61354, Room 206.
The public is invited to attend and comment.
The lawsuit alleges the City of LaSalle discharged pollutants into the Illinois River on multiple occasions, and it failed to file the required quarterly discharge monitoring reports for over two years.
This comes as La Salle residents have complained to LaSalle City Council about their water being yellow and having a foul smell.
Many of the chemicals that are listed on the EPA ECHO website as potentially being discharged into the Illinois and Vermillion rivers by the City of LaSalle were also in soil and furnace filters that residents tested from their homes, and in the hardened scale from a discharge pipe at Carus Chemical tested by residents in September 2023.
According to the EPA ECHO website tutorial, chemical manufacturers are allowed to discharge wastewater into municipal wastewater treatment systems (sewage plants) without reporting to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory system (TRI). While municipalities are not required to report to the TRI, they are required to file Discharge Monitoring Reports with the EPA, which the City of LaSalle failed to do, according to the lawsuit.
Below is a clip of the of January 8, 2024, LaSalle City Council meeting when resident Marty Schneider questioned LaSalle Mayor Jeff Grove about water quality. Mayor Grove stayed silent with his head bowed as residents complained about their water. Video by Dawn Hicks.
Following is the lawsuit filed with the Illinois Pollution Control Board and a link to the case file with the Illinois Pollution Control Board. https://pcb.illinois.gov/Cases/GetCaseDetailsById?caseId=17430
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