Preservation Group Wants to Warn Public of Asbestos Dangers

June 20, 2006 - An environmental organization concerned with asbestos pollution on the beaches of Illinois State Park is going to court to receive permission to distribute fliers warning the public of the dangers of exposure to the material. 

According to an article published in the Chicago Sun-Times, “the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society filed a suit seeking an injunction to force the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to drop its ban on posting or distributing a ‘richly detailed flier’." It also seeks an injunction against individual state officials who were involved in banning the flier in the first place.

The group notes that the state is infringing on their First Amendment rights.  They have a vested interest in protecting this park, they add, as they were instrumental in forming the park itself and pushing to have it designated as a nature preserve.  It was the first preserve of its kind in the nation.

Eight years ago, however, the state of Illinois was responsible for having sand contaminated with asbestos- containing material and asbestos fibers dumped on the beaches in the north end of the park and offshore on Lake Michigan as part of a beach nourishment program, says the Sun-Times article.  That’s when relationships between the Dunesland Preservation Society and the state started to decline.

The organization was instrumental in getting the state to agree to publish and distribute their own flier in 2000, warning the public of asbestos dangers, but the state discontinued the flier when printing costs became too high.  The state also posted display cases in this busy state park, showing examples of what asbestos looks like and what should be avoided.  Those display cases are also no longer present.

Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society has endeavored to fill that gap, only to receive resistance from the state.

"It is not only a high-handed outrage and a threat to the public's health, but it is also another effort by state officials to cover-up the role they played in the pollution at the park's beaches," said Dunesland president Paul Kakuris.

Alarmingly, the article reports, some of the sand used for beach nourishment was dredged from areas near the Johns Manville Superfund site in Waukegan and the adjacent Midwest Generation power plant.