February 1, Dear Mr. Hoxsie:

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1 February 1, 2019 Mr. Alex Hoxsie Planner/Landscape Architect U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Chicago District 231 S. LaSalle Street, Suite 1500 Chicago, IL Dear Mr. Hoxsie: Thank you for allowing Friends of the Parks (FOTP) to submit the following comments associated with the development of a Dredged Material Management Plan for the Chicago Area Waterway System in the Calumet region. As a city-wide parks advocacy organization, Friends of the Parks mission is to inspire, equip, and mobilize a diverse Chicago to ensure an equitable park system for a healthy Chicago. GENERAL COMMENTS Friends of the Parks is pleased that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Chicago District ( Corps ) has determined that a full Environmental Impact Statement is necessary to address the potential for adverse environmental impacts arising from its proposal to continue to use and increase the volume of dredged material to be placed in a 1984 confined disposal facility ( CDF ) on the shore of Lake Michigan or otherwise create another disposal site on the southeast side of Chicago. Friends of the Parks and the public have long anticipated the Corps closing and returning the existing CDF site to the Chicago Park District for use as parkland at the end of the existing container s useful life. The current CDF was constructed in Under a 1992 contract among the Illinois International Port District (IIPD), the Chicago Park District, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the CDF was required to be capped and converted to a public park within ten years or when the container was filled. The life of the CDF has already been extended, and the Army Corps of Engineers itself has calculated that the facility cannot continue to take in dredged material beyond 2022, at which time the facility should be capped and developed as parkland. Beyond the necessity for a full EIS and the environmental issues and questions we raise below, we believe there are serious legal questions as to whether the Corps can convert a 1984 containment structure intended for temporary use into a permanent waste disposal site on Chicago s lakefront. Among those questions is whether continuing use of the existing CDF would be a violation of the Public Trust Doctrine established over 100 years ago in Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Illinois, 146

2 U.S. 387 (1892), as to this very Lake Michigan shore. Please be advised that should the Corps select continuing use and expansion of the existing CDF as its favored alternative, Friends of the Parks will be compelled to review its legal options to protect the public s right to use the Lake Michigan shore. As mentioned in our comments to you on March 5, 2018, Friends of the Parks advocates for uninterrupted public access to the lakefront and completion of the lakefront park system through the Last Four Miles initiative. Through the Last Four Miles Initiative we are working to ensure continuous, public access along the last four miles of Chicago s 30-mile lakefront, including two miles on the southeast portion of the city s lakefront which includes the CDF site. Launched in 2009 in conjunction with Chicago s 100-year celebration of the Burnham Plan, the Last Four Miles vision lays important groundwork for next steps in comprehensive, community-inclusive planning. These long-standing city-wide plans would be waylaid, if not terminated, should the Corps decide to effectively create a permanent landfill within the last two miles on the Lake Michigan shore. Such a decision should not be taken outside a broader, comprehensive planning process for the lakefront or in contravention of the Public Trust Doctrine. ENVIRONMENTAL COMMENTS Friends of the Parks has been in conversation with environmental justice advocates as well as local residents in the region, and we share their concerns. As any site must pose as little threat to human health and the environment as possible, increasing the volume of highly contaminated dredged material in the current outdated CDF on the shore of Lake Michigan, the entire Region s water supply and recreational resource, is certainly not the solution. Further, the environmental impacts associated with the Corps contaminated dredge disposal should no longer be borne by the southeast Chicago community, which has for too long borne the brunt of upstream industrial pollution. Environmental justice requires that other options outside this community be considered. A CDF in this location would disproportionately impact poor minority residents. Statistics show there are 48 hazardous waste sites per square mile in communities of color as opposed to an average of just 2 in majority white communities. As a point of reference, the current site of the CDF is in the southern segment of South Chicago, the least affluent of all communities along the southeast side. South Chicago has a total population of 28,095 people which is 74% African American and 22% Latino with a median household income of $28,504. There are two proposed sites located in South Deering which has been fighting for removal of manganese from its community. It has a total of 15,305 residents of which 67% are African American and 30% are Latino with a median household income of $35,000. The other sites are located on the East Side which has 23,784 residents who are 17% white, 80% Latino and have a median household income of $43,500. Finally, as the Army Corps of Engineers has been conducting outreach on the other proposed sites in the 10 th ward, no community meetings were held in South Chicago or the Bush neighborhood which is the community that currently sites the confined disposal facility. The Army Corps of Engineers should be conducting public hearings in that community, especially since vertical expansion has just recently started being raised as an option, and an expansion would impact that community the most. There are many questions regarding the potential environmental impacts associated with the Corps proposal and the sites selected, and, in particular, with the inclusion of a vertical expansion of the existing CDF among the alternatives. Minimally, all of the questions below should be addressed in the Environmental Impact Statement.

3 1. Has the Corps conducted any studies to determine whether contaminants in the dredge material in the current CDF have leaked or otherwise been released into Lake Michigan or surrounding waterways? a. Is the Corps routinely monitoring the groundwater beneath the CDF? In the Lake Michigan surface water adjacent to the CDF? b. If the Corps does not routinely monitor groundwater and surface water, has it ever sampled the groundwater or surface water in the immediate area of the CDF? c. If so, have the monitoring or sampling results shown any increase in contaminants associated with the dredge material above background levels? What contaminants and at what level? When? 2. Does the CDF have a liner? a. How is it constructed? b. What is the liner composed of? c. Is it a single or double liner? d. How does the Corps monitor the condition of the liner? e. What is the current condition of the liner? 3. Does the CDF have a leachate collection system? a. Does the Corps routinely sample the leachate? b. If so, have the sampling results shown hazardous or toxic contaminants? c. Does the Corps pump leachate out of the CDF? 4. Does the Corps routinely sample the dredge material before placing it in the CDF? What method of testing is used, e.g. toxic contaminant leachate procedure (TCLP)? a. Does the CDF contain hazardous waste? b. What hazardous constituents have been found in the dredge material placed in the CDF? 5. Under the proposal for expanding the CDF would the materials placed in the CDF have even higher concentrations of hazardous materials, such as heavy metals, PAFs, and other toxics? 6. Does the CDF comply with federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act s requirements for a hazardous waste disposal site? Is it permitted as a hazardous waste disposal site? 7. Would the 1984 CDF be retrofitted with a state-of-the-art liner system and a leachate collection and pumping system prior to any expansion? 8. What assurance can the Corps give the public that increasing the volume of dredge material in the 1984 CDF structure beyond that originally anticipated will not result in a release of contaminants into the environment? 9. Have rising water levels in Lake Michigan affected the existing CDF? If so, how?

4 a. What steps is the Corps taking to ensure that the existing CDF will not be adversely affected by rising lake levels? b. What steps would the Corps take to protect an expanded CDF from rising lake levels? 10. Since the current confined disposal facility has already filled the site with more than 1,500,000 cubic yards of dredge material, will it be capped and closed and a new CDF constructed? a. Is the concept that a new CDF will be constructed on top of the existing CDF? b. Would it extend beyond the footprint of the existing CDF? c. What would be the proposed height? d. What material would the vertical walls be made of? e. Would the expanded CDF have a separate liner system? A leachate collection and pumping system? 11. The air quality monitoring the Army Corps of Engineers discusses relies upon a regional monitor at George Washington High School, more than 3 miles from the current CDF site. a. Has that monitor detected air contaminants in excess of Clean Air Act standards? If so, what contaminants have been detected and at what level? b. Has the Corps conducted any fence-line air quality monitoring or air quality monitoring within the fence-line of the existing CDF? If so, what air pollutants have been detected and at what levels? c. Has the Corps conducted any air quality monitoring in the park land or Bush neighborhood directly adjacent to the existing CDF? If so, what air pollutants have been detected and at what levels? d. Has the Corps conducted any air quality monitoring in close proximity to the other proposed sites? If so, what air pollutants have been detected and at what levels? 12. The Environmental Impact Statement should also reflect current developments for the port and surrounding areas in the selection of a site. There are current development efforts underway at local parks including a boat launch at Steelworkers Park, located half a mile from the current confined disposal facility. What would be the health consequences for people who choose to boat off of Steelworkers Park and use the park for active or passive recreation? There are also beaches in close proximity to the existing CDF site. People swim, boat, fish, and picnic in this area. In addition to the risks of contaminating the Lake Michigan water supply and of long-term exposure of local residents to air-borne and water-borne contaminants, what are the existing and potential health impacts on recreational users of Lake Michigan and the nearby parks? Finally, Friends of the Parks believes the EIS must include a review of options for reducing dredged material volumes and contaminant concentrations, including (1) the performance of a study to identify the sources contributing to sediment loading throughout the Calumet River basin and (2) a quantification of the reductions in load and contaminant concentrations that can be achieved by the US ACE working with other agencies (federal, state, local) to develop an enforceable sediment reduction plan, with a focus on achieving reductions in load that are the greatest sources of contaminated sediment that in the short-term can reduce loading and in the long-term will obviate the need for containment of untreatable hazardous dredged material.

5 We urge the Army Corps of Engineers to cap the current CDF and reuse the space as it was originally intended, as park land and open space. Please contact Sandra Del Toro, Deputy Director of Program and Resource Development, at (312) , ext. 1 or deltoros@fotp.org with any further questions. Sincerely, Juanita Irizarry Executive Director