THE FOLLOWING STORY IS BY BILL PICKETT
Some ordinance changes requested by the Vermilion County Health Department have won the backing of a county board committee.
Jana Messmore, Director of Environmental Health, says one of the changes her department requested would update the county’s nuisance ordinance….
{AUDIO: “With the Nuisance Ordinance, we’re just trying to update it so it’s a little bit easier to take some of our nuisance cases through our local court rather than going through the Illinois Pollution Control Board.”}
And Messmore described what sort of cases that involves…
{AUDIO: “Illegal burning. So, if you have someone that tears down a building and they decide they’re going to burn it down. Or if someone is continuously burning trash and it becomes a nuisance to the neighborhood.”}
The second ordinance change requested is because last June the Illinois Department of Public Health informed the county health department they could no longer send water samples to the state lab for free testing…
{AUDIO: “So, if residents would like to get their water sampled, and they want us to go out and pull the sample rather than sending it into a lab on their own – we would need to come up with a fee for that. So the update to the Water Ordinance would allow us to charge a fee to go out and pull water samples for residents.”}
The final ordinance change involves the county’s Solid Waste Disposal Ordinance…
{AUDIO: “That would update it – just like with the Nuisance Ordinance, if we have individuals who are dumping or burying waste – that would give us the authority to take it through our county court system rather than the Illinois Pollution Control Board. And it would also raise the fee for solid waste haulers from $50 to $100 – which hasn’t been raised since the 1980s.”
All three changes were approved by the Health and Education Committee of the Vermilion County Board (Wednesday night) and now head to the full board for consideration.
