Savoy Trustees Approve Clinton Landfill Consent Decree

The Savoy Village Board is the 11th local government to approve a consent decree with the Clinton Landfill.

Trustees for the Champaign-Urbana suburb voted unanimously Wednesday evening to endorse the agreement, after having tabled the matter at a previous meeting in August.

Trustee Joan Dykstra says that despite initial doubts, she thinks the consent decree offers the best possible deal under the circumstances for protecting the Mahomet Aquifer, which lies underneath the landfill. Dystra says the important thing now is to start work on new ways to protect the aquifer.

“This is not the end," said Dystra. "This is just the end of this phase. We need to continue to be vigilant, to be watchdogs over this aquifer. And this has been a huge wakeup call for all of the citizens, to know just how important this aquifer is to us and to the future of our communities.”

Under terms of the consent decree, the landfill would stop all efforts to take in PCB's or additional manufactured gas plant waste. But in return, local governments would end their lawsuit against the landfill, ending efforts to remove gas plant waste it’s already taken in. Opponents want to leave the option of a lawsuit open, and continue efforts to force the landfill to remove its gas plant waste.

With Savoy’s approval, there remain just three local governments in the 14-member Mahomet Aquifer Coalition that have yet to vote on the Clinton Landfill consent decree. One of them, the Mahomet Valley Water Authority, meets on the question on Friday in Clinton.