Still seeking solution to Lucas-Berg pit problem

January 8, 2008
http://www.southtownstar.com/news/opinion/editorials/729870,010808edit.article

For the past eight years or so, the Army Corps of Engineers has been preparing to use the Lucas-Berg Pit in Worth as the dumping ground for what it dredges from the Calumet Sag Channel to keep it navigable.

And for almost three times as in many years, village residents have been fighting to prevent the 70-acre former gravel pit from being used for that or any other purpose, such as a landfill, that could mean the dumping of potentially hazardous materials.

The Army Corps' response has always been that it lacks the funds needed to seek alternative dumping sites.

That's no longer the case now that U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) has secured a $100,000 grant to do just that.

Will this guarantee the pit, located just west of Harlem Avenue and 111th Street, won't be used as the final resting place for the dredgings taken from the Cal-Sag?

Unfortunately, no. But for the people who live near the site, it's as good a promise as they could have hoped for - for now.

This pit, now owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and leased by the Army Corps, might once have been out in the middle of nowhere, but it hasn't been for a long, long time. Now it's in a prime residential/commercial area near parks and schools, and it seems hard to believe the agency would even continue to push for it.

We've never really bought the agency's argument that it lacked other solutions or the money to find them, but we must credit Lipinski with forcing the issue. We were particularly impressed that he convinced U.S. Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), a ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, to tour the site in an effort to win his support in the matter.

Of course, this is only part of the battle. Army Corps officials have said in the past they don't have the money to buy another dump site and would need to get the land for free before they'd consider it.

Well, we'll cross that pit when we get to it. For now, we look forward to seeing what the experts have to say when their analysis is finished.