Gov. Pat Quinn ordered the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to take immediate action keeping polychlorinated biphenyl waste out of Clinton Landfill today.

Clinton Landfill is situated above a portion of the Mahomet Aquifer, a water source for about 750,000 people in East Central Illinois, which led to concerns when Peoria Waste Disposal requested that the Environmental Protection Agency permit the dumping of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, waste at the landfill.

“Hundreds of thousands of Illinois residents can look back on this as the day we protected their clean drinking water source,” Governor Quinn said. “PCBs have no place in or near the drinking water of any community in our state. That is why I directed the EPA to take immediate action and protect the water supply for families throughout central Illinois.”

The governor’s order is based on a response received by the IEPA from the DeWitt County Board on Friday.

Illinois law allows the IEPA to modify a landfill permit upon discovery that a decision was made using false or misleading information. The IEPA will issue a modified permit for Clinton Landfill later this week.

Concentrations of federally regulated concentrations of PCB waste had never been authorized locally at Clinton Landfill, as the DeWitt County Board stated in a letter to the IEPA that it did not authorize disposal of PCBs at the landfill in its Sept. 12, 2002 sitting approval.

Further, in both the location application and a public hearing on the request for local approval in 2002, representatives of Peoria Disposal Company represented to the county board that the Clinton Landfill would not accept PCB waste as federally regulated concentrations.

The federal EPA is still considering the landfill’s request, but Quinn sent a letter to the agency in May urging the administration to deny Peoria Disposal Company’s request for federal authorization to dispose of toxic waste in the landfill.