South Cook News

The City of Chicago and the Army Corps of Engineers announced plans this week to move forward and expand a toxic waste dumping site next to Calumet Park, despite residents’ desire for the area to become part of the park.

Over the course of the last forty years, residents near Calumet Park had been holding out hope that an area being used as a dumping site for waste, including toxic waste, could be transformed into public park space, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

“This fight is about keeping Lake Michigan clean and making sure everyone in the region can enjoy the Calumet River and Lake Michigan in a healthy way," Joel Brammeier, executive director of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said of how the dumping site expansion would exacerbate that challenge, 6Park News reported. 

Since its creation, the dumpsite has seen materials such as lead and mercury dredged from the bottom of the Calumet River and dumped into a nearby pond next to Calumet Park. Originally intended only as a temporary dumpsite for the  Army Corps of Engineers aimed at helping commercial ships sail on the river, the site has sustained itself for almost half a century. 

Residents in the area believed the site would be converted into a park as far back as the mid-1990s. Now, the dumpsite's planned expansion will delay any conversion to parkland by at least two more decades.

“It is very unfair to the community,” resident Marie Collins-Wright told 6Park News.

Many residents and environmental experts have worried that the dumping ground is contaminating fish and the river itself, especially as the shoreline erodes over time. The Chicago Department of Transportation said that the expansion of the waste site was “the most practical option,” instead of opening a new one at a different location amid even stronger opposition.