CHICAGO—Where the Calumet River meets the shores of Lake Michigan sits 43 acres of lakefront property, a seemingly perfect location for Southeast Side residents to enjoy.
But for nearly 40 years, this has been the site of a toxic waste dump, storing over 1.2 million cubic yards of pollution-laced sediment dredged from local waterways.
The location was meant to become a public park once the landfill was full. As it hit capacity, its operator, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, instead announced plans to vertically expand the Chicago Area Confined Disposal Facility to extend its life another 20 years.
That kicked off a new front in the decades-long battle by residents to move the landfill into its park era—and this year, with help from advocates and state officials, they halted the expansion. Now, they’re eagerly awaiting news on when the Army Corps will cap the site, a key step before park development can begin.
“To be able to turn a story of four decades of a landfill into a park is an opportunity for the city that we need to seize,” said Brian Gladstein, executive director of Friends of the Parks in Chicago, one of the groups that fought in court for this outcome.
The long story of the landfill began in 1982, when the state of Illinois authorized the Army Corps to build it under the condition that the federal agency would cap and remediate the site once it was full. The intent was for the Army Corps to hand over the land by 1994 to the Chicago Park District to create a community park beside the preexisting Calumet Park, according to Howard Learner, who heads the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
That year came and went. The Army Corps kept adding more dredged sediment, which the state has said contains toxic materials ranging from mercury and arsenic to polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, the result of the city’s long industrial history.
Asked about the overrun, the Army Corps said: “While there was an initial expectation that the site would be transferred to the Chicago Park District in 1994, the Corps’ ongoing authority—granted by Congress—to maintain commercial navigation in Calumet Harbor and River remained unchanged.”
In early 2019, when the site was close to filling up, the Army Corps announced a plan to find space for additional dredging. At a Southeast Side community meeting, the agency proposed six sites for a confined disposal facility, or CDF, all within the 10th Ward, according to Amalia NietoGomez, executive director of the environmental justice group Alliance of the Southeast.
Residents packed the meeting, demanding that the agency leave their pollution-burdened community out of it, NietoGomez said.
“Folks were mad because they’re like, ‘We already had a CDF. Why do we have to always be the ones taking the burden of any toxic development?’” NietoGomez said.
The Army Corps ultimately decided to expand the existing site upward with an additional three-story-high mound of dredged material.
“It was a hollow win, … giving us another beautiful mound feature with legacy pollution right under it,” Alliance of the Southeast organizer Sam Corona said. “Legacy pollution that’s going to keep on being there and it’s going to keep on bleeding into the water.”
The Army Corps said it operated the site safely and followed the requirements of its state-issued permits.
Hoping to stop the expansion, the Alliance of the Southeast and Friends of the Parks filed a federal lawsuit in March 2023.
“Siting a new toxic waste disposal land along the shoreline of Lake Michigan in Chicago’s Southeast Side’s environmental justice community is simply wrong in multiple ways, as a matter of law, as a matter of policy, and as a matter of common sense,” said Learner, the lead attorney on the case.
Illinois banned new landfills in Cook County in 2012. As the Army Corps has been operating the site on a water pollution control permit rather than a landfill permit since the 1980s, it argued the vertical expansion would be exempt from this ban. But state Attorney General Kwame Raoul told the court in January that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency disagreed.
In March, the Army Corps voluntarily withdrew its application to expand the landfill. In June, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin dismissed the lawsuit as moot.
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The Army Corps now says it has no plans at this time to vertically expand the existing landfill.
That means it must find an alternative site for new dredging from Chicago’s waterways, which may be challenging. Army Corps project manager Ron Papa said the agency is still exploring its options in collaboration with the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and the Illinois International Port District.
“We’re advocating and pushing hard that it doesn’t happen anywhere in Cook County, let alone in South Chicago,” said Gladstein, with Friends of the Parks. “There needs to be locations found outside of Cook County that haven’t experienced as much of the pollution that the Southeast Side has endured.”
Before the existing landfill can become a park, the Army Corps must cap and remediate it and ensure that no toxins will enter Lake Michigan. Papa said there’s no timeline on when that work will begin. The state Environmental Protection Agency said it has not set a deadline.
Alliance of the Southeast’s NietoGomez is concerned that the lake’s fresh drinking water remains vulnerable to contamination so long as the landfill remains uncapped. It’s separated from Lake Michigan by a sheet pile cutoff wall that aims to prevent seepage. She wants the agency to shore up the site while capping it.
Once work on the site is done, the Chicago Park District said it will start discussions with Southeast Side residents about a public park there.
Gladstein is focused on keeping pressure on city officials to ensure that the Army Corps does its part.
“We will do our work as activists and community liaisons to ensure that the community understands what’s happening and what is necessary,” he said. “I [wouldn’t] rely on our federal government to do that anytime soon.”
Friends of the Park, the Alliance of the Southeast and the Environmental Law and Policy Center plan to host a joint community event in September to commemorate the win over the landfill and look to its future as a park.
“Lakefront property doesn’t happen often,” Gladstein said. “So this has a real opportunity to be a model park that we can create. We’re excited to dive in and do that with the community.”
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