EMSL Analytical Inc. will offer a rebuttal June 12 to questions raised at the packed Zoning Board of Appeals hearing held a month ago. Residents are urged to attend.
Perhaps EMSL will offer another anecdote about an employee bringing children to the lab as if somehow this signifies safety. Maybe they will tell us again how they like to eat and shop in town to demonstrate community loyalty. Or maybe they will remind us they already hired someone who lives so close they can walk to work.
It is, however, the spaces between this gross sugar-coating that will leave us irresponsibly informed.
EMSL will fail to explain nebulous terms like “environmental contaminants” in stating what they plan to test. They will not adequately explain how they could ever know what samples are being delivered six days a week via regular mail, UPS or FedEx. They will fail to discuss employees through Glassdoor, an online job site, who claim EMSL is “unsafe” and “unethical.” And there will be no comment regarding the lawsuit Chen v. EMSL.
The rebuttal by EMSL will attempt to paint a picture of a safe, hazardous-testing lab nestled near the backyards of families barbecuing and kids leaping through sprinklers.
But even if such picturesque toxic testing could be miraculously managed with constant perfection from within the lab, remember risks outside their control.
One such risk is “fly dumping,” an inevitable threat to the safety of residents if this permit is approved.
Fly dumping is illegal dumping of waste material on public or private property. In this context, it is on par with “donations” made to the Salvation Army or Goodwill where people cleaning out basements or wherever box their junk and dump the items at back doors with an ease of guilt, believing they did the “right” thing by not tossing them to a landfill.
The problem is back-door boxes at a toxic lab will not be filled with worn slippers, old board games, or chipped pottery. These boxes, dumped after hours, will be filled with items like compact-fluorescent light bulbs, mercury thermometers and jars of weird substances from Grandpa’s garage.
First responders will then be called to secure this dumpsite until assessment and removal of the contaminants are made.
The latter assumes children using the alley as a play lot won’t find the boxes and open them first.
A lab testing hazardous samples on a residential block is a risk, no matter how safe they may strive to be.
In this due process, EMSL must explain how they meet the Standards for Review, including how they meet goals set forth in the Corridor Plan to revitalize Madison Street. Another standard, as it relates to property values, will leave EMSL to prove home prices next to a toxic testing lab won’t plummet in our hot yoga, non-GMO, and kale-juicing culture.
EMSL will fail to meet these reasonable standards because they can’t.
Join us June 12 as we continue to demonstrate care for River Forest and the amazing people who live here.
Jennifer Moore is a lifelong River Forest resident, mother of three and co-founder of Citizens United to Reject EMSL (CARE)
