Oak Park eyes water reservoir under 
a new Barrie Park in Oak Park?

By ERIC LINDEN

Even before the massive clean-up of contamination in Barrie Park begins
in October, Oak Park village government officials will start exploring
installing a new two-million gallon water storage reservoir below the
new park.

The park board of Oak Park, which owns Barrie, the closed and
coal-tar-contaminated park on the square block bounded by Lombard
Avenue, Garfield Street, Taylor Avenue and Harvard Street so far is
going along with the exploration of the new water storage. Members of
the park board and village board of trustees authorized exploration of
the reservoir at a special joint meeting June 9 at village hall.

The Barrie Park saga has been ongoing since for nearly two years, when
the park was discovered by have been contaminated by coal tar that
seeped into the ground from a manufactured-gas plant on the site that
was run by the predecessor of the ComEd electric company and the Nicor
natural gas company. The Park District of Oak Park fenced in and closed
the park in January 1999, and since then, public meetings have been
held, a Barrie Park Citizen Advisory Council has been created to involve
residents and negotiations have taken place to have the utilities pay
for the needed remediation.

The utilities this year signed off on an agreement to make the park
usable again entirely at their expense. And on Friday morning, park
district and village government officials met to begin hearing initial
reports about the coming work, which is scheduled to begin sometime
around Oct. 1. Starting then, crews will remove the contaminated soil
from the park, from the surrounding parkways and from some surrounding
private properties.

With all work overseen by village government and park district
officials--and, likely, it was decided Friday, by an independent
consultant to be hired jointly by the two governments--the contaminated
dirt then would have to be replaced by fresh and clean soil. And that's
where the water storage facility comes into play.

Oak Park currently has water storage and pumping facilities under the
Barrie Park tennis courts at the southwest corner of Lombard and
Garfield, which holds five million gallons, under the playground at
Hatch Elementary School, 1000 N. Ridgeland Ave., which also holds five
gallons; and under Stevenson Recreation Center, which is on the south
side of Lake Street at Taylor Avenue and which holds two-and-a-half
million gallons. The storage facilities are accompanied by water pumping
stations, but two-million-gallon new Barrie Park water storage facility
would use the pumping capability in place under the Barrie tennis
courts.

Even with Oak Park's population down in recent years and with fewer
fires occurring thanks to increased fire prevention efforts, officials
said Oak Park still should add water storage for a variety of reasons.
Officials maintained that the village has enough water on hand to fully
accommodate all uses, such as household tap water and fire-fighting
capability.

Among the reasons, Village Trustee Rick Kuner said, was that standards
are changing for how much water Oak Park should have in reserve. And
Swenson said Chicago, where Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park and many
other suburbs buy their water from Lake Michigan, has changed its
storage standards in recent years, so Oak Park could use more water in
storage. The village and its residents would be in good shape without
the extra water, but with the Barrie work being done, the manager said,
it is "a logical and prudent" to explore doing the project now in case
there are "long-term water storage targets" that present themselves in
the future.

A hand-out from Swenson to village government and park district
officials said the method of water storage under parks facilities is
traditional in Oak Park. And he said it would be "100 percent certain"
that the water below a new Barrie Park would not be exposed to
contamination. First, he said, there would be new and clean soil under
the park and also a barrier would be placed around the storage to
protect it from anything in the ground.

The underground water storage would not take up the entire new park,
which was important to park board members who gave their initial
approval of the water storage exploration on Friday. Park Commissioners
Laura Perna and Karen Garbe and Park Board President Tim Kelly said they
favored the possible new water storage so long as the park's and the
park district's interests were protected.

For instance, the parks officials said, the water storage facility will
have to be designed in such a way that the turf above ground will not be
affected and there would be no impact on any future plans for additional
features to Barrie Park, should the park board decide that course.
Swenson assured park board members that the storage facility will not
harm future development at Barrie. Even a new swimming pool--should that
ever happen--could be accommodated at Barrie Park, village officials
guaranteed. Representing the village board at Friday's meeting were
Village President Barbara Furlong and Trustees Kuner, Barbara Ebner,
William "JJ" Turner and Joanne Trapani.

Swenson said he and his staff would further study the costs of the new
water storage and could not now estimate the costs. But there should be
savings both to village hall and to the utilities. Swenson said
approximately 600 truck loads of soil and other fill will have to be
hauled into the new Barrie Park once the contaminated soil is removed.
With a water storage reservoir in place, less dirt will have to be
hauled in and that would save the utilities money.

As far as the remediation project, Swenson, park district executive Gary
Balling and other officials met with representatives of the utilities to
try to set up the massive task, which is expected to take years. A
formal and complete remediation action plan is to be filed by July 15
with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Among the many details still to be worked out, however, is how to remove
the contaminated soil. Officials have been trying to contact CSX, the
transportation company that owns the railroad line that runs parallel to
the Eisenhower Expressway to the north of Barrie Park with the goal of
having most of the soil taken away by rail cars.

The goal is to not have the south Oak Park neighborhood disrupted by too
many trucks traveling on streets. As it is, enough trucks will have to
be used to haul away contaminated dirt that there will be some
disturbance. But CSX, according to the Oak Park officials, has not
responded to Oak Park's attempts to start negotiations.

"We need to get somebody from the (CSX) railroad to the table," said
park district director Balling. Swenson said ComEd has promised to use
its lobbying strength to get CSX involved, but he and other officials
also said they would contract federal representatives in Congress to
assist in those efforts also.

"I think we should begin our lobbying now," Swenson said. Officials said
they would contact U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis, a Democrat whose 7th
Congressional District includes the part of Oak Park north of the
expressway and who lives in the Chicago community of Austin that is
adjacent to Oak Park on the east, and U.S. Rep. William O. Lipinski, a
Democrat whose 3rd Congressional District includes Barrie Park and other
areas of Oak Park south of the expressway and who heads the House's
Transportation Committee.

Kuner said Oak Park officials also should not rule out contacting the
Wisconsin Central railroad if CSX remains unresponsive or does not
cooperate with Oak Park efforts to remove the contaminated Barrie Park
soil from the village. Negotiations are expected to be even more
complicated on that front because nearby sites and residents along a
soil evacuation route might object to having contaminated soil coming
through their communities.

Figuring out that removal route, directing truck traffic through Oak
Park and many, many other details must be worked out before the Barrie
remediation project can begin in earnest. Included in that is how many
residents will be disrupted by the work on Barrie Park. Among other
things, ComEd has pledged to temporarily relocate any residents that
need to be away from their homes while work is being done on their
properties. "They have experience in that," Swenson said of ComEd. He
also said ComEd and local officials will work to assure that Oak Parkers
will not be disrupted seriously or otherwise hurt by the relocation.

With input from residents factoring in, park district at village hall
officials at all levels will be communicating to formulate the project.
Officials Friday also decided to consider jointly hire a consultant to
head up the project and provide maximum oversight that it will be
carried out in such a way to insure maximum safety and minimum
inconvenience to Oak Park residents. A request for proposals from
consultant candidates soon will be drawn up issued publicly.

The Barrie remediation details, once they are formulated will be
communicated by officials to residents through several methods. Included
in those are various newsletters, news releases to media outlets and, it
was hoped, inclusion in the Board Briefs publication issued by the Oak
Park District 97 elementary schools.