Part 2: 13: Decline and Fall
13:
Decline and Fall
From 1920 on, the character of the
street slowly began to change, and after 1930, the shift toward industrial and
commercial use of Market Street intensified. By the middle of the 20th
century, the decline for both residential and commercial us of Market Street
was well under way. By century’s end, virtually all by two structures would be
gone.
A.
Condemned
In 1926, the “Red Flats,” a two story frame structure on
Market Street 150 feet south of Water Street was condemned by the city building
department. Building Commissioner Walter H. Nibbelink gave notice to the
building owner, H. H. Beach of Waukegan, that after repeated health and safety
violations that had not been addressed over many years, the city would have the
building torn down. Bulging walls from water damaged, decayed ceilings, a back
porch on the verge of collapse, and “no toilets in the building” were listed as
among the concerns. Under these conditions, “a number of colored families”
lived. (1)
[By the mid-1920s H.H. Beach had been a successful
Waukegan figure for many years. A farmer in Benton Township in 1900, Harry H.
Beach moved to Waukegan and owned a successful bakery on Genesee Street in
Waukegan in the first decade of the 20th century, and slowly began
to acquire property. By the mid-teens he had sold the bakery and conducted a
garage, car rental and dealership at Grand and Genesee. He later sold the
garage went into the carburetor-battery station business in Kansas city, Mo, with
his son Linton, among other interests.
Harry and his wife Julia had 3 children together, Linton,
born approx. 1890, Howard born approx. 1893, and daughter Mary, born approx.
1899. In 1920, Harry, 55, lived on Jackson Avenue with his wife and daughter Mary,
then 21.
The second Beach son, Howard, was hailed in the local
press as the “perfect man,” and a “modern Apollo” after passing his physical
exam at the Great Lakes Naval Station to join the navy at age 24 in 1917. Among
the attributes to his status as “perfect” included “100%” teeth, eyesight and
hearing, and a stature of 5 feet 7 inches at 142 lbs. Despite these
perfections, “a week after being accepted by the navy, he was taken with a
severe cold, tonsillitis developed and he was forced to go home for three
days.” (2)
Howard, with experience at his father’s garage, served as
a mechanic at the station, and was soon promoted to supervising the truck fleet
there. Around the same time, his parents Harry and Julia were surprised to
learn from their grocery delivery man that Howard had married 18 year old
Thelma Beaudreau of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Thelma’s brother lived in Waukegan,
playing the organ at the Academy theatre, and she visited him frequently and
had met Howard on one of her trips. (3)
The Beach family was not without its personal tragedies.
Harry was out driving on one of his regular Sunday evening rides with Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Putnam in August of 1916. Putnam, the superintendent of the wire
mill did not own a car, and would rent one from the Beach garage, often driven
by Mr. Beach himself. Mrs. Beach was away in Kansas visiting relatives on this
night. While driving south past the Naval station, Harry asked which way to
proceed and Charles said “turn right” at the Downey NW Railroad crossing in
North Chicago. Harry was known to be a cautious driver, but no one in the car
saw the southbound train as it raced out from the North Chicago station, and
their car was hit broadside. Charles and Harry were injured, but Mrs. Putnam
was killed, probably instantly. (4) The
subsequent inquest found neither the driver or the railroad at fault. (5)]
It is surmised that the “Red Flats” were in the large
building south of Water Street on the east side of Market containing the
addresses 211, 213, 215, 217, 219. (After the 1922 re-numbering, these would
have changed to 111, 113, 115, 117, 119.) (This structure does not appear on
maps of the late 1920s, while surrounding buildings do.)
The
“Red Flats” had had its’ own checkered history by the time the building was
condemned. In 1909 it was the site of the Autumn Leaf Club, raided by the
police that year as an “opium den,” and “disorderly house” complete with crap
tables and illegal liquor. “In one small room Chief Tyrrell found the woman
opium pipe victim. The door was locked and had to be kicked in. The woman,
aroused, said she had not heard the noise. She had been smoking an
ivory-stemmed opium pipe. The odor of the drug was in the air.
“The
woman had taken a pill of opium, the can of which was hidden away, put it on
the pipe bowl after it had been heated over a candle, inhaled the fumes and
gone to sleep. The pipe is wound in bicycle tape and evidently had been
leaking…
“The
woman who was found dead drunk from poppy fumes was a chocolate hued blue grass
belle who came from Chicago.” (6)
At that time, it was said that the
building was owned by a G.W. “Son” Robinson, (6) though little is known of him
and when the building was sold to H.H Beach.
[Walter Chipley
sued the Waukegan Evening News for a story it published in 1911 claiming that
Chipley ran the disorderly Oak Leaf Club on Market Street. “The well-known
Belvedere man” sued the defunct newspaper and its editor A H Keeler for $25,000
for slander, but Chipley later relented and dropped the suit. (7)]
Among
those who lived at the Red Flats was William (Warmoth) Hudson, arrested for
wife beating (8) and later for draft dodging during WWI, (9) Walter Nuby, arrested
in a “shooting scrape,” (10) Muncie Baily for a stabbing, (11) and Andrew Tony
for an unsuccessful robbery and police chase.(12)
Florence Witmore--“ pretty as beauty goes with the colored
element”--was arrested at the Red Flats in 1922 as “disorderly.” She was found
with a “prominent young man” whose identity was not revealed in the news
accounts. (13)
In the 1910 census, there were a mix of people living at
those addresses: 1 Italian family with 3
children, 1 Russian family with 4 children, and approx. 23 boarders, ranging in
age from 23 through 55, 7 from Russia, 6 from Italy and the remaining 10 people
were American blacks, from Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama.
By the 1920 census, the population living at these
addresses was comprised of all but 2 black people: 2 families with 1 child
each, 1 married couple with no children and 18 single boarders, ages 16 through
55. The children were all born in Illinois, but the adults had been born in
many other places including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Virginia, Missouri, Indiana and New York. 13 of the men worked at the Griess-Pfegger Tannery a short
walk down Water Street at the lakefront.
The 1925 city directory lists 38 individuals living at
211-219; of these 23 were adults and 15 were children. 7 men worked at the
Tannery The remaining men are listed as unspecified laborers.
It appears that there were 8 single men without families
living in the red flats and 6 families with children:
John and
Cora Scott and one son, Ora. John was 27, Cora was 26, Ora was 10.
Louis and
Alice Scott and one child Louis was 35, Alice was 30.
James and
Lily Scott and their 3 children, Leila, 4, Mamie Lee, 2 and the baby James Jr.
James was 29, Lily was 27. Lily Scott was the daughter of George and Nancy
Poole (nee Heins) who lived in the same building.
(It is
unclear if these three Scott families were related, but that is possible; John
and Cora and James and Lily had all been born in Georgia. Louis Scott is listed
variously as having been born in Louisiana or Georgia, and Alice had been born
in Georgia.)
George and
Nancy Poole and their 4 children
Hattie Turk,
widow of James Turk and her sons Boyce and Luther
Mary cape
and her 1 child
For the Beach family, mother Julia died in 1931 at the
age of 60. Harry H Beach died 9 years later, in 1940, at the age of 78. Son
Howard moved to Milwaukee with his wife Thelma, where is was President of the
Graham-Beach Tire company. Son Linton… Daughter Mary…
For the former Red Flats residents, John and Cora Scott
moved further south on Market Street to 225 by 1940. Son Ora lived variously on
Sheridan R and South Ave in the early 1940s.
Louis Scott died in 1938, at the age of 41. His wife
Alice continued to live on Market Street, at 538 in the early 1940. (538 was
the site of a fatal fire in 1953 which claimed the lives of 5 persons.)
George and Nancy Poole had moved to Wallace Avenue in
North Chicago by 1930, and remained their through the mid 1940s. Nancy Poole
died in 1932 at the age of 54; her husband George Poole died in 1949 at the age
of 71.
Further south down Market Street, between Lake and
Belvidere, 211 Market was also condemned by the city in 1926. “B Janowitz (?) of Waukegan was
notified today to remove a building at 211 Market street. The building is a two
story frame structure and at the present time is unoccupied. A hamburger (?)
and restaurant was formerly located in the place. Nibbelink says walls are bad,
the ceiling weak and the floors and roof are in dangerous condition. (14)
During the same city review on September 1, 1926, condemned
buildings were to be removed by their owners by September 15, or the city would
demolish them and offer the scrap wood to anyone interested.
One of those buildings was the two story flat building
located at 603 Market, on the east side of the street just south of South
Avenue known as the “second red flats.” “Included among the building defects,
according to Nibbelink are bulging walls, cracked foundation, ceiling joists
torn away, a cracked chimney, probably about to collapse, and a sagging roof.”
(14)
There were eight apartments in the building, but only
three were thought to be occupied. No names were listed for the people living
in this dangerous building, or what they may have paid in rent. No occupants
were listed for this address in the 1925 city directory published the year
previous. In the first few years of the century, a grocery store had been
conducted there. William M Brown was listed as living at 603 as recently as
1922.
[In 1926, the year that it was condemned, the owner of
603 was George H Bairstow, son of Fred Bairstow, well-known monument maker and
coal dealer of Waukegan. George was the eldest son of Fred, born in 1877.
George had 2 brothers, John and Fred Jr and a sister Ruth. The prosperous
family lived on Ash.
George had entered local politics while Fred Jr continued
the family business after the death of Fred Sr. in 1912. By 1918 George had
been elected to the Lake County board of supervisors as Supervisor of Waukegan
Township as well as “Poormaster” for the town. He also served on the road and
bridge committee on the board.
Bairstow was praised in a news account for his “kindness
of heart” in April of 1918 for taking
into his home a little girl ” from a poor family on the south side,” who had
been in his home since the previous Christmas. “He and his wife have become
attached to the little thing and while he has not legally adopted it, it
appears evident that the supervisor and poormaster will keep the girl as long
as her parents are willing to leave her with them. In view of the high cost of
living, this kindness on the part of the supervisor cannot go unnoticed.” The
parents of the child are not quoted in the article, but it does not appear that
the Bairstows kept the child “indefinitely,” as planned. (15)
It seems that Bairstow’s kindness was not universally
applied. He leapt from his car after a small traffic accident downtown one evening and without warning gave the
driver of the other car a “stunning blow” to the jaw, which “knocked out two teeth, broke off one
and loosened six others.” A second blow caused a bleeding cut to the man’s ear.
Bairstow insisted that the man head immediately to the police station, even
squeezing his way into the other man’s car when the other tried to drive his
wife home first, as she had been slightly injured in the accident also.
Bairstow did not relent until he discovered the identity of the other driver
was John S Heath, a prominent local businessman. Heath filed suit against
Bairstow for $10,000 damages, though the outcome of that effort is uncertain.
(16)
As poormaster, he sided with Judge Person’s proposal for
the creation in Lake County of “a detention home for dependents, delinquents, or
truant children.” The Humane Society “and other women in the city” vehemently
opposed the proposal, and advocated instead for an orphanage. Miss Himmelreich
of the Humane Society already maintained her home as a detention home for
delinquent children.(17)
Bairstow was not, however, in support of the proposal by
Supervisor Eichler of Highland Park to
publish the names of all the recipients of public aid as “the only way to stop
a $60,000 a year “leak” in the county’s expenses.” Eichler’s ally in the
proposal, Supervisor Vercoe went so far as to declare “there probably are many
persons receiving such aid who are not in need of it and if such a list were published
they would not think of accepting it.” (18) Bairstrow assured the board that
the list of recipients and the amounts they received were available from him
and the county clerk, and would save the “deserving poor” from public
embarrassment and humiliation.”
Several years later, in 1927, after losing re-election,
Bairstow became embroiled in a protracted scandal when an audit revealed
shortages in town funds during his tenure.
As part of a larger county scandal, four indictments were handed down in
July of 1927:
“Bill number one indicted county treasurer Roy Bracher on
a charge of embezzlement. Number two named Roy Bracher, Ira Pearsall, Harold
Martin, Caleb Busick and Clark C Nye on a charge of conspiring to embezzle
$100,000 from the county treasury in 1922. The third named Bracher, Pearsall
and Martin for conspiracy in the alleged taking of $33,000 as interest on
county deposits and the fourth named George Bairstow with withholding $60,000
in township funds.” (19) All the men proclaimed their innocence. (Bracher’s
friends testified that Bracher had deposited the errant funds in a bank in
Eureka, Kansas, “in good faith without any intention of defrauding the county,”
though that claim did not seem to be believed.) The case against Bairstow
dragged on into 1928; he retuned some funds, contested other amounts, and ran
for the state legislature, it appears unsuccessfully.
George Bairstow died in 1947 at the age of 72.
His
son Jack E, a lawyer who had helped defend his father in his time of
tribulation, was state representative from 1953 until his death a month before
President Kennedy’s assassination. (20, 21) Jack had switched parties from his
father and grandfather, serving as a Democrat.]
C.
Fires
A series of catastrophic fires
hastened the demise of Market Street.
A fire in December of 1926 “completely wiped out”
Tony Grobelch’s grocery store at 546 Market between Gulf and Elm. It was
thought to have started “by a mouse gnawing into a box of matches.” The loss
was estimated at $10,000. (22)
Another
blaze on Market street caused $1,000 in damage in 1930 (23)
Junk dealer Nure Emin, 51, of 210 Market Street “suffered
severe face burns yesterday when ammonia gas in a refrigerator exploded during
a trash fire in his yard” in 1951. (24)
A
year later, the Emin bailed paper warehouse at 210 Market burned to the ground,
for a loss estimated at $36,000 (25)
As measured by human loss, one of the worst fires since
the great refinery explosion of 1910 occurred in 1953.
Just before Thanksgiving in 1953, teacher Louis Boches,
of the McAlister Lincoln kindergarten opened a discussion with her class, as
she had in past years, of the meaning of the word “thankful.” She gave examples
of her own of things to be thankful for, such as sunshine, birds and snow, as
asked her young students to add to the list. “Many of the children,” she later
wrote, “told of their dreams like electric trains and walkie-talkie dolls that
they planned to be thankful for if Santa brought them.
“Audrey [Saunders,5 years old] sat waiting her turn in
her sad and serious way. When I called her name she looked up at me with her
too-knowing brown eyes and said, ‘teacher, I’m not thankful for nothing.’
“She read the question on my face and added, ‘But teacher
I haven’t got nothing.’
The week after Thanksgiving, Boches brought out a box of
Christmas cards for the children to look through. Most of the children searched
for Santa Claus and snow man cards. “Audrey made a pile of religious cards and
sat in the corner singing to every baby Jesus and kissing his picture.” (26)
The next day, Audrey died in a fire in her home at 538
Market Street.
Her mother Ophelia and her sister Minnie, 11, a brother
James, 8 and another child Sally McGee, also 5, also died.
The Saunders family lived in the basement apartment of
their building, separated from the McGees by a cardboard partition. The fire
seemed to have started with a faulty kerosene lamp or stove in the McGee
apartment. Ammies McGee, the mother of Sally, grabbed a bundle, which she
thought was her child, and ran outside to find only blankets “and had to be
restrained from reentering the building when she discovered her mistake.” (27) Four of the victims died of smoke inhalation,
one from burns. (28) The McGee baby was found by firemen in her crib. (29)
Between 35 to 80 people were displaced. Mrs. Ruth Jackson
on the second floor, dropped her baby to Frank Pope who was passing by, then
jumped to safety herself. Both were uninjured.
State’s Atty. Robert C Nelson said he was "shocked
and horrified" by the tragedy and promised a full investigation to
determine if the crowded building met health and safety ordinances, and if city
inspections of “similar structures” should be increased. (28)
538 Market, on the west side of Market, just south of
Gulf (Tenuta), had been owned by Flyod Booker since at least 1951, managed with
help from his son William. In 1953, Flyod Booker was approx. 71 years old,
having been born in 1882 in Alabama. He had married Lilly McMillan (Miller) in
1902 before moving north after 1920. Lilly died in 1962 and Flyod died in 1967
at the age of 85.
The Bookers had several children, including Floyd Jr,
Eugene (1905-1945), William (1909-1961), Alice Lee Booker (Ingram) (1920-2013);
Minnie (Tilman), Mary (Hobbs-Grose), Pinkie (Fields), Nelson and David.
Three years later, in February 1956, a fire in the
building next door at 536 Market claimed the lives of three of the Booker
family, Patricia Booker, 2, Nelson Jr, 5, and a niece Deborah Booker, 5. Patricia
and Nelson Jr were the children of Nelson Booker and his wife Williestine. This
fire was apparently caused by an oil heater I a second floor bedroom.
Williestine escaped from a 2nd story window onto the roof of the
building next door. She could not reach the children in another bedroom because
of the flames and smoke. A passerby helped force open the first floor door and
helped rescue other children. (30)
On February 17, 1958, the Nitro Chemical plant at the
south end of Market at 740 was gutted by stuburn fire that took 11 hours to
subdue in brutally cold conditions. (31)
A huge fire on November 15, 1973
destroyed the buildings of the Greiss-Pfleger Tannery which had recently been sold
to Commonwealth Edison and had been scheduled for destruction. The Tannery had
closed operations the previous July, after having been a major Waukegan
employer since 1918. (32)
Workmen had accidently started the fire with a torch while inspecting the building
in preparation for its demolition. (33)
Another huge fire in 1991 destroyed three abandoned
warehouse buildings near Market and Water Streets. The buildings had been
occupied by homeless, who had scavenged materials like copper pipe “for food
money.” The fire—the largest to hit Waukegan in many years, according to Mayor Haig Paravonian—could be seen from Chicago to
Milwaukee. (34)
D. Changes 1
From 1920 on, the character of the
street slowly began to change, and after 1930, the shift toward industrial and
commercial use of Market Street intensified. According to census and directory
figures, the number of residential addresses and residents on Market Street continued
a steady decline, from the 1910 peak of 117 addressees with 1193 residents to
93 addresses and 627 residents in 1940, and 88 addresses in 1951 and 68 addresses
in 1960.
Waukegan Steam Boiler Works took
over 222, at the corner of Market and Belvedere, in 1925 and remained there
until 1946, From 1951 through 60 this was office of Staben civil
engineers. By 1960 a large warehouse was added behind an office.
Sinclair Refining Company took over
301, Market and Belvedere by 1922, and remained there until 1960.
Further down the block toward
Liberty, the Texas Co Oils took over 325 and held it from 1927 through 1951. By
1946, the site had expanded south to the corner of Liberty
Peterson Oils occupied 419 from 1925
through 1951.
A large warehouse went up at 431
around 1925, with McKinley being filled in. This was Durkin and Pillsbury
Milling Storage from 1925 through 29, and later variously Johnson Motors
(1939), Sears (1941-48), the Globe store (1951-60).
575 on the east side of Market south
of Elm had a Standard Oil warehouse in 1925-27, and was later the site for the
Drew Ice & Coal company, which supplied fuel and ice for the street from 1935
through 1957.
Further south, 607 was replaced by a
warehouse in 1939, which lasted until at least 1960; the American Can Company
had a warehouse at 615 from 1943 through 1960.
By 1960, all of the residential
buildings on the east side of Market south of South Avenue had been removed.
E. Changes 2: Diamond Scrap
From the mid-1920s on, Diamond Scrap
metal became an increasing presence on Market Street.
The Diamond family were to be prominent in Waukegan
throughout the 20th century.
Abraham (Abe) Diamond was born in Russia (Lithuania) in
1871. He immigrated to the United States in 1890, and in 1891 he married Sarah
Gorden (?), also born in Russia.
They had 9 children together: Hiram, born approx. 1893,
Racheal, born 1895, Louis, born Nov 15, 1896, Benjamin, born 1899, Katie, born
1901, Lottie, born 1903, Nathan born 1905, Ruby born 1907, and Rueben, born
1908
Of Abe and Sarah Diamond’s children, Benjamin, Nathan and
Ruben were to continue in their father’s business. Benjamin’s son Burton
continued until the business closed and he retired in the 1990s. Louis was to
strike out in a different direction.
Burton Diamond died April 1, 1999 in Yuma, Arizona, where
he had retired two years previously. He and his wife Marlene had a son Ben, a
daughter Lisbeth. Besides being owner of the Diamond scrap yard from 1958
through 1993, Burton had served 2 terms as a Republican 7th ward
alderman, had served on the school board, as president from 1968-70, the zoning
board and lake-front committees and had been active and decorated for
fund-raising and other pro-Israel efforts. In 1959 he donated land in Waukegan
to become Ben Diamond Park, in memory of his father.
Diamond Scrapyards was said to have been founded by Abe
Diamond in 1892 in the area of Ash and Franklin. Abe himself could be seen
around town in the early years of the 20th century riding in his
horse-drawn cart. (35)
By
1922 the scrap and recycling operations had expanded, and Diamond scrap had
purchased 413 on the east side of Market Street between Liberty and McKinley
By the 1939, Diamond scrap yards had expanded from 413 to
the neighboring lot to the south at 415, and by 1943 had also taken over from Lake County Car Wreckers,the
lot at 320 further north, near Belvedere, (while Nure Emin operated his junk
lot between Belvedere and Lake), with Diamond continuing to expand north toward
Water street over the Waukegan river.
As the century wore on, the Diamond business continued
and expanded, removing and processing old metals, machinery and other materials
to be re-sold to other manufacturing firms. By mid-century and later, removal
of old automobiles was a big business, and Diamond made a lucrative deal with
Inland steel for crushed automobiles that did not need to be completely
stripped, an otherwise costly and time-consuming process. (36) With large
cranes, auto-crushers, shredders, bailers and other heavy equipment, "we're really a factory without
a roof," (37) Burt Diamond--described as “a dapper and cheerful
fellow” (36) --once told a
News Sun reporter. One wonders how such operations affected the quality of
life for the diminishing number of residents on the street.
By 1960, the entire east side of the
Market Street just south of Liberty was and junk/ scrap yard. Only one
residence remained, at the corner of Liberty and Market, the Grana Grocery.
Nick had died in 1947, and his wife Pauline was still listed as living there in
1948. Various tenants occupied 401 after 1948, and it was used as a grocery
(Slater 1954) and a restaurant (Slater, 1960.)
The end came for
Diamond Scrap when their main warehouse over the Waukegan River collapsed
during a flood in 1993.(37) The company filed for bankruptcy and the bank of
Waukegan foreclosed on the 11 acre site of the scrap yard. Clearing the site
followed, including removal of the 4,320 tires that had accumulated. (38)
F. Changes 3: The Belvidere Ramp
By 1967, construction was underway
for the ramps down from the Belvedere street bridge over the CNW tracks. By
April of that year, all the structures on the west side of Market north from
Belvedere to Water Street and south from Belvedere to approx. McKinley were
gone, to make way for the ramps. In total, up to 25 buildings would be removed
from 222 near Water Street to approx. 502 south of McKinley (even numbered.)
Many of the buildings lost in the
demolition had once housed businesses that had served the local population.
Among the buildings removed was that
at 236/136, which had been the Rob Tyrell saloon and the Joe Kautenburg saloon
from approx. 1903 through 1913, followed briefly by the Scott Ricks resteraunt
in 1919 when Waukegan went “dry;”
Andre Cusimano ran a grocery at
312/210 in the 1920’s, but by the 1940 the site was taken over by Nure Emin’s
junk yard;
John Kussman and Math Budrunas each
had saloons at 402/302 in 1908 and 1913; during prohibition the space was used
as a grocery store (Buttita, 1919) a soft drink parlor (Durham, 1920’s) and in
1935 the Third Ward Political and Social club.
Next door to the south at 404/304,
John Salduski ran a saloon from approx. 1908 through 1913 and Marselmo
Varrentos ran a pool room in the 1920’s followed by the long-running street
fixture, the Grana tavern from at least 1935 through at least 1960.
Further south at 410/310, Charles
McBride ran a soft drink parlor in 1927 and lived there until approx. 1930,
along with the Williams family, who lived at that address from at least 1930
through approx. 1957, almost 30 years.
A large industrial building went up
at 500 near McKinley, in 1925, housing a machine shop (J W Aulson & sons,
1925-29) and in the rear a bottle exchange (1925-27). The building sat vacant
from 1935-46, and was used for May’s Barbecue restaurant from 1948-57. John May
lived next door to the south at 602/502 from approx. 1946 through 1960.
Many long-term Market street
residents had once lived in the houses that were destroyed.
Jennie Bedone (Borona/ Bonanimo/
Bodami) the widow of Joseph, lived just south of 312/210 at 316/ 216 it seems
for most of her life. In 1910 Jennie was the 22 year old wife of Joseph, who
was then 40, living at 316 with their children Annie, 6 and Joe 3. (If the
dates of the census are accurate, Jennie would have had Annie when she was 16
years old.) By 1920, 4 more children joined the household, Harry, Jennie,
Caterina and Paul, followed by 3 more, Mike, Nikea and Louie by 1930. By 1930,
Jennie was approx. 42 years old, with 9 children and a widow. She is still
listed as living at 316/ 216 as late as 1951, having lived at that address for
approx. 40 years
Mrs Ida Gilbert lived at 424/ 324
from approx. 1943 through 1960;
Louis Patterson lived at 432/332
from approx. 1925 through 1960, some 35 years;
J George Stang of 502 Market died in
1910 at the age of 79. He had come to the city at an early age and had been a
master baker and a crossing guard at the South Avenue crossing of the
Northwestern railroad. “He enjoyed the respect of the entire community and was
held in high esteem by all who know him. He and his family were prominent in
German-American affairs.” (39) His wife
had died many years previously. Margaret Stang, his daughter, lived on Market street, it seems, her entire life.
She appears on the 1880 census as age 15, before Market Street residences were
numbered, and lived at 502/ 402 from approx. 1900 through approx. 1930; her
brother George had lived with Margaret until 1910. She was 64 and had never
married in 1930.She died in 1932 at the age of approx. 67. Her brother Leonard
lived next door at 508 Market from approx. 1910 through 1920.
Mary Count, widow of John (Coenet)
lived at 518/418 from approx. 1910 through 1946, approx. 36 years.
John Count, of German decent, from
Philidelphia, had married Mary Jane May, of Highland Park Illinois in 1891, and
by 1900 they were living in Waukegan, on West Street, with their 2 children,
Margaret and John. By 1910 the family was living on Market Street. John Count Sr.
died in 1918 at age 59 of heart disease. (40) In 1920, Mary was living with her
son John and his wife Louise and their daughter Mary. Margaret married Don
Rosebone, and had moved out to Peoria, but Margaret died in 1923 at the age of
30. John Jr and his wife and child moved
out to North Chicago by 1930; John died in 1940 at the age of 44. Mary Count seemed
to be living alone from approx. 1930 through at least 1946. She would have been
approx. 79 years old in 1946; She died December 9, 1947.
Nick Pintavali (Panpavallo/
Pentavelle) lived at 522/422 from approx. 1920 through 1960. Nick and wife Rosa
(Sarah) had 4 children, Samuel, Carmana, Anthony and Jennie. Nick died in early
1961 at the age of 73.
The Sacramento family lived at
524/424 from approx..1920 through 1946.Father and mother Domonick (Joseph) and
Racheal (Reigsatsia, Grace) had lived further south on Market at 920 in 1910
after immigrating to the US from Meiselmarie, Sicily in 1906. (This is the same
district in Sicily where the Grana family came from, neighbors on Market street
within a few blocks. ) By 1920 they were living at 524/ 424 with Domonick’s
brother Toney and their six children, Joe, Carl, Paul, Domonick, Benedicto and
Mary, followed by Annie, born in 1921. Another child, Jospeh died in 1928,
after surviving only a few months. Domonick and Grace lived at 424 until they
died, Grace in 1937, Domonick in 1942.
The eldest son Joseph lived in the
same house, with his wife Dominica (ne La Rosa, also from Meiselmarie, Sicily) and their children Grace, Dominic, Joseph and
Tony, the closeness of the family mirrored in their shared names. The elder
Domonick’s brother Tony also lived next door at 526/426 with his wife Angela
from approx. 1925 through 1946.
The Sacramento family made
connections through marriage with other Italian families in the neighborhood.
Beatrice married Pete DePorta of Market street when she was 18 and he was 30.
They lived at 526/426 around 1930; Anna Sacramento married Frank Merlo, the
youngest of the Frank Merlo Sr children, of 622 Market, but by 1940 they had
moved off Market to Fulton Street.
G. Legacy
The remains of the
“dirty” industries that once thrived on or near Market Street left legacies of
environmental damage that continue into the 21st century. The
creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1973 gave the federal
government the power and the resources to thoroughly investigate sites that
might pose risks to public health. The Waukegan lake-front soon came under
close scrutiny, and the findings gave pause to those many hopes of possibly
re-developing the area of residential or commercial uses.
From north to South, the area on and surrounding Market Street
was filled with contaminants, many of which had built up over many years.
In the center of Market Street, the 11 acre site of the
Diamond Scrap yards was cleared of debris following the company’s bankruptcy.
Soil samples done in 1991 indicated the troubling presence of “inorganics,
volatile organic compounds (VOC), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbins (PAH), and
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB),” including “cadmium, lead, cyanide, copper and
zinc” appearing in large amounts, as
well as solvents, cleaning materials, Creosote (used for treating wood), diesel
fuel, fuel oil, asphalt and tire burning residues.(41) (PAHs have been linked to skin, lung, bladder, liver, and
stomach cancers in well-established animal model studies.(42)
Wes Dunski, Waukegan Director of Economic Development at
the time, was one of the boosters of redevelopment ideas. “As for the Diamond
Scrap Yard,,” he was quoted as saying, “there`s nothing to be afraid of in a
junkyard full of automobile parts. Sure, there`s some grease on the ground, but
that can be cleaned up. It`s no worse than your driveway, and it`s certainly
not life-threatening.`` (38)
The Site of Waukegan
Paint and Lacquer Company located at the south end of Market Street in the
Terminal building from the mid-1930s through the mid-1970s was owned by Lou
Diamond, brother of Bert Diamond of Diamond scrap yards. . A fire in 1976
burned the factory. In 1992, as
lakefront redevelopment was being contemplated, a local Waukegan Harbor Citizens Advisory Group
(CAG) alerted the EPA of “200 drums, eight tanks and seven vats of potentially
explosive materials,” left in a shed at the former Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
site. Former Waukegan fire chief Jack Stewart verified the danger of the
abandoned materials: “``We knew that some of those barrels contained
nitrocellulose, a compound that is so dangerous that it has to be shipped in an
alcohol solution. When it dries out, it becomes a bomb.`` (38) The EPA spent
$100,00 in emergency response to safely remove the chemicals. (The EPA later
recovered $94,000 in its suit against the “responsible parties for the cost of
the clean-up. (43)
Wes Dunski, continued to down-played
the hazards. ``Everyone got all excited about the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
situation,`` he said at the time of the clean-up, ``but, you know, grass was
growing around those drums and birds had been sitting on them for 20 years.”
(38)
Across Market Street from
Waukegan Paint and Laquer at 801 was the former property of VR/Wesson
(a Division of Fansteel), which had ceased operations in 1987 and the remaining
buildings removed. (44) A lakefront re-development plan that included 222
residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail space estimated at a cost
between $87 million and $110 million stalled over the cost of cleaning up the
site. Soil samples studied by the EPA found “PCBs, arsenic, copper, lead and
mercury.” (45)
Just north of the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer site was the
site of the Lakeshore Foundry, east of the EE7J rail lines at Lake Michigan.
There, EPA investigators found contamination—mainly lead—“from over 100 years of foundry operations,”
. Groundwater, 10 feet below the surface, was also found to be contaminated,
though it was not thought that this had been the source of drinking water for
nearby residents. (46).
Even further south, into North
Chicago, in 1967 “Abbott Labs
admitted dumping a half-million gallons of processed waste which contains
nitrates and phosphates into the lake daily,” and “American Steel and Wire’s
discharged water contains sulphuric acid.” Both firms promised to the Northern
Illinois Water Resources and Conservation commission to meet water quality standards
by the end of 1968. (47)
At the north end of Market
Street, at Water, Wilder Tannery had once occupied the lakefront just north of
the Waukegan River, before moving to its larger factory north of harbor at
Pershing and Dahringer under the ownership of Griess-Pflegger in 1917. By the
mid 1930s, the Water street site was occupied by Midland finishes, followed by Dexter coatings
and eventually AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings.
Further north, polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) were discovered in Lake Michigan, and in 1975 federal and
state environmental surveys traced the source of the contamination to the
Johnson Outboard Motor / Outboard Marine corp. plant on the Waukegan harbor. “The Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1981 that the company was
''one of the major, if not the major source'' of PCB contamination, and had
dumped as much as 1.7 million pounds of PCB's into the northernmost section of
the harbor or into a ditch and slender channel running directly to the lake. As
a result, water in parts of the harbor contains 500 to 1,000 times the
recommended Federal standard of PCB's and waters heading out into the open lake
contain 50 times the federally recommended level, the agency said. (48) After protracted litigation, the Waukegan
harbor and the OMC site was designated a superfund site by the EPA, and dredging
the harbor and clean-up was complete, though Outboard motor paid only 2% of the
$150 million dollar clean-up costs. (49) In 1998, OMC announced it was closing
all but a small office in Waukegan and moving the rest of its operations to
Milwaukeee. Despite the clean-up, PCBs, a carcinegine, are still found in Waukegan
harbor. (50)
The site of the Griess-Pfegger Tannery was also problematic. The tanning
process had involved a complex series of steps utilizing vast amounts of water,
a variety of toxic chemicals and produced significant amounts of waste. A detailed study in 1937 described the
tanning process in which 650 employee processed 670,000 lbs of cattle hides per week,
mainly for shoe leather: The hides are trimmed, split and washed, then soaked;
then tissue is removed and soaked again in lime for de-hairing; washed and
bated, with ammonium sulfate. The process then moves to the tan house, where
the hides are treated with salt and acid in preparation for tanning with
chriomioum sulfate; the tanning is then “set” with an alkali such as sodium
bicarbonate; some hides are given a second tanning; the excess moisture is
pressed off, and various dyes are then used to color the leather. The final
finishing process involves treating the leather with water, and various oils,
then coated with lacquers, waters, glues and resins, brushed or sprayed on by
hand. (51)
[Many of these chemical processes may have been dangerous
for the workers handling them. In 1949, a Dr Louis Schwartz though he had
discovered the solution to the “race problem” when he noted the bleaching white
of the hands and arms of black workers at the Waukegan tannery. His ideas for
the changing of pigment color even reached the pages of Look Magazine.
Unfortunately, the discoloration of the workers’ skin was somewhat splotchy;
the only way to get uniform results, he surmised, would be to take the bleach
internally. “Dr Schwartz recalls that when it was proposed to feed the chemical
to Negroes experimentally he could not secure any suitable volunteers,” since the
chemicals were poisonous. (52)]
The Tannery had had some controversy with the city over
waste removal early on. In 1919, two years after its new plant was opened,
tannery waste was clogging the Sand Street sewer line. The city demanded the
tannery take immediate action to un-clog the line; the tannery countered that
they had applied for approval of their own waste disposal system six months
previous, but the city replied that they could not wait until the new system
was in place to clean the sewer line.(53)
The Tannery did eventually install its own waste
treatment system, which included two large tanks at the north east corner of
the plants, each with a 170,000 gallon capacity. In those tanks, wastes were
accumulated and clarified and “the clarified effluent has been discharged into
Lake Michigan.” On hazard was that the plant was surrounded on three sides by
“low lying marshy soil” with “Sand Street (where the tannery is located) is
only 8.47 ft. above lake level,” with groundwater only 3 feet below Sand
street. The volume of liquid in the tanks varied and was controlled by “local
drainage” and other “seepage.”
Ultimately, the detailed study—funded partially by the
tannery itself-- found that the treatment system at the tannery “was sufficient”
and that “further treatment of these wastes at the Waukegan sewage treatment
plant is not necessary.” (51)
Soon after the Tannery closed operations for good in
1973, it sold its property to Commonwealth Edison and the buildings were gutted
by a huge fire in November of that year. North Shore Gas owned the site later,
and operated a coal gasification plant there. “Waste products of the extraction
process include tars, sludges, and acids. Many of these wastes were disposed of
on site in a “tar pit” on the property….On site contaminants include aromatic hydrocarbons,
volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals.” (54) The site was declared a
superfund site by the US EPA, and work began in the early 1990s to clear the
“tar pit” and the contaminated surrounding area. It is unclear how much of the
site contamination, including the tar pit, had been caused by the tannery or by
the gas plant, but future use of the site remains uncertain.
Even more worrisome is the site of the Johns-Manville
plant to the north. Concerns over the health hazards of asbestos had grown over
the course of several decades. There is a long, by now well-documented record
of company obfuscation and cover-up of the scientific evidence of risk. That
risk extended beyond the threshold of the factory itself, as evidence of
contamination outside the plant became clear. Bill Sells, a manager of the
Johns-Manville plant in Waukegan in the early 1970s recalled “A road wound
through this mountain of asbestos-laden scrap,” at the sprawling plant, “and as
I drove through it for the first time I stopped to watch a bulldozer crush a
36-inch sewer pipe. A cloud of dust swirled around my car.” Inside the plant,
he said, he found “asbestos-laden dust coating almost every visible surface.”
An EPA, Brad Bradley, had a similar recollection of asbestos fibers: . “I think
they are everywhere,” said the expert. Indeed, virtually anywhere on the site
that Bradley scuffed the ground with his boot, he found the telltale fibers.”
(55)
By the early 1970s lawsuits by diseased workers were
mounting steadily. Johns Manville filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982 with
12,000 lawsuits filed against the company (56) and legal costs that year averaging
$2 million a month (57) With the final
closing of the Waukegan plant, demolition of the buildings began in 1998.
The Johns-Manville site became one of the first EPA
superfund sites in Illinois. The agency found “"lead, chrome, thiram, and
xylene were also disposed in the landfill area, but the primary contaminant of
concern was asbestos. Before the remediation, asbestos-containing sludge was
located at the landfill surface in many areas and could easily become
airborne." (58) Even after the clean-up and “capping” of the site, traces
of asbestos were detected in the surrounding area, making future use of the
site uncertain.
Notes
(1)
To remove place; is a menace, Waukegan Daily News Wed Sept 1, 1926, p1
(2) Modern Apollo
found in Howard Beach, Waukegan, Libertyville Independent, Jan 3, 1918, P6
(3) Hears son is
wedded from her grocery man, Libertyville Independent, Aug 23, 1917, p 13
(4) Mrs. Putnam
is killed when limited strikes auto, Libertyville Independent Aug 17, 1916, p1
(5) ‘Open’
verdict returned; Beach employs lawyer, Libertyville Independent Aug 17, 1916,
p1
(6) Waukegan police raid opium joint, Libertyville
independent Friday Aug 13, 1909, p1)
(7) Dismisses suit
against Keeler Belvidere Daily Republican, Belvidere, Illinois, Fri Oct 27,
1911, p12
(8)
Wife beater is given a sentence of 30 days in Jail Lake County
Independent and Waukegan Weekly Sun , Oct 5, 1916, p6
(9) Warmoth
Hudson is under arrest; Libertyville independent Feb 7, 1918, P6
(10) 2
under arrest as result of a shooting scrape Libertyville independent, April 8,
1920, p12
(11) Slashes
Negro whom he thinks took his watch Libertyville independent, Nov 23, 1922, p9
(12)
Negro
thief is captured after chase by police Libertyville independent, Jan 13, 1921,
p12
(13)
Claim colored woman disorderly Libertyville independent, Aug 17, 1922, p18
(14) Buildings condemned here today,
Waukegan Daily News, Thurs Sept 2, 1926, p1
(15) Has three of
his own yet he has room for 4th Libertyville Independent, April 4,
1918, p9
(16) Bairstow made
defendant in $10,000 suit, Thursday February 1, 1923, p 1The Antioch News
(17) Want Orphanage, not anxious for a detention
home Libertyville Independent June 27m 1918, p2
(18) Publish names of county’s poor in future
Libertyville Independent, October 5, 1922, p9
(19) Grand Jury names six in Lake county fund shortage
July 28, 1927, The Antioch News, p1
(20) 'Illinois Blue Book 1963-1964,' Biographical Sketch
of Jack E. Bairstow, pg. 266
(21) 'Rep. Bairstow of Waukegan Dies At Age
61,' Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1963, Section 2, page 7
(22) The McHenry
Plaindealer, McHenry, Illinois, Thu Dec 16, 1926, p8
(23) "Market St. blaze in Waukegan causes $1,000
damage.," Independent Register (Libertyville, Lake County, Illinois: Frank
H. Just), 27 Nov 1930, p. 9
(24) Junk Dealer is burned by refrigerator gas Chicago
Tribune, Fri Feb 16, 1951, p20]
(25) $36,000 Fire destroys warehouse in Waukegan’ Chicago
Tribune, Thursday, Oct 2, 1952
(26) ‘Haven’t
got nothing’ Tuscon Daily Citizen, Tuscon, Arizona, Mon Dec 14, 1953, p30
(27) PROBE
BLAZE WHICH KILLED 5 IN WAUKEGAN Mt. Vernon Register-News Mt Vernon, Illinois
Monday, December 7, 1953, Page 5
(28) ASK GRAND
JURY PROBE OF FATAL WAUKEGAN FIRE Chicago Tribune Dec 23, 1953
(29) FIRE COSTS
FOUR LIVES IN ONE WAUKEGAN FAMILY WAUKEGAN, Ill Newport Daily Press, Newport
News, Virginia, Mon Dec 7, 1953, P3
(29) FIRE COSTS
FOUR LIVES IN ONE WAUKEGAN FAMILY WAUKEGAN, Ill Somerset Daily American
Newspaper Archives December 07, 1953 - Page 2
(30) 3 children die in a Waukegan tenement fire
Chicago Daily Tribune, Wed Feb 15, 1956, part 2, P10
(31) Chicago Fire History website
(32) Spectacular blaze guts tannery
building, Waukegan News-Sun November 15,
1973.
(33) Workman’s torch sparked tannery fire,
Waukegan News-Sun
(34) 3 Warehouses
Destroyed By Fire Chicago Tribune June 18, 1991
(35) Diamond
has only horsed that unhitches itself Lake County Independent and Waukegan
Weekely Sun, Oct 5, 1906, P3
(36) Make
junk profitable, they’ll get rid of it
The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, Wed April 1, 1970, P 22
(37) Burton
"Burt" Diamond Burial: Am Echod Cemetery Waukegan Lake County
Illinois, USA
(38) The Pollution Patrol It`s A
Dirty Job, But Somebody Has To Do It By Julie
Bennett April 26, 1992 Chicago Tribune
(39) Old resident dead Libertyville
independent, Oct 28, 1910 p8
(40) John Count
dies at Springfield Libertyville independent Oct 10, 1918, p 6
(41) Final stage I & II report, Waukjegan Harbor
Remedial Action plan, Waukegan, Ill, Dec 1994
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and Citzens
Advisory Group, Waukegan, p 164-165
(42) Bostrom, C.-E.; Gerde, P.; Hanberg, A.; Jernstrom, B.;
Johansson, C.; Kyrklund, T.; Rannug, A.; Tornqvist, M.; Victorin, K.;
Westerholm, R. (2002). "Cancer risk assessment, indicators, and
guidelines for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the ambient air". Environmental Health Perspectives.
110 (Suppl 3): 451–488.
(43)
61 FR 30067 - Settlement Under Section 122(h) of the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act; In the Matter of
Waukegan Paint and Lacquer Company, Inc., Waukegan, IL Federal Register Volume 61, Issue 115 (June 13, 1996) 
AE 2.7: GS 4.107: AE 2.106: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and
Records Administration
AE 2.7: GS 4.107: AE 2.106: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and
Records Administration
(44) Analysis of
Brownfield Cleanup Alternatives (ABCA) Former Fansteel Property 801 S. Market
Street Waukegan, Illinois 60085 December 7, 2015 Prepared for: The City of
Waukegan 100 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. Waukegan, IL 60085
(45) Waukegan seeks federal environmental grants for
lakefront development Dan Moran, News-Sun Jan 1, 2016
(46) DOCUMENTATION OF
ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATOR DETERMINATION Interim Final 2/5/99 RCRA Corrective
Action Environmental Indicator (EI) RCRIS Code (CA 750) Migration of Contaminated
Groundwater Under Control Facility Name: Lake Shore Foundry Co., Inc. Facility
Address: Waukegan, Illinois Facility EPA ID#: ILR 000 111 591
(47) Kenosha News
Newspaper Archives Thursday, November 09, 1967 - Page 26
(48) WAUKEGAN WEARY OF LONG POLLUTION FIGHT By RONALD SMOTHERS Published: February 21, 1983, NYtimes
(49)
EPA Declares “World’s Largest PCB Mess” At Waukegan Harbor Clean By Mike Krauser August 5, 2014
at 1:40 pm
(50) Waukegan Hopes Plant Closing Ends PCB Stigma September
27, 1998 By Casey Bukro, Tribune Staff Writer.
(51) Treatment
of Tannery Wastes at the Griess-Pfleger Tannery, Waukegan, Illinois Author(s):
John W. Harnley, Frank R. Wagner and H. Gladys Swope Source: Sewage Works
Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Jul., 1940), pp. 771-799 Published by: Water
Environment Federation
(52) Chemical to
turn Negroes white is held impractical, Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburge, Fla,
Tues Sept 13, 1949, p 27
(53)
Tannery to build $50,000 sewage disposal plant here Libertyville independent,
July 24, 1919
(54) Waukegan
Harbor Area of Concern Expanded Study Area Habitat Management Plan Coastal
Management Program Prepared by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Third
Draft Version, November 2013
(55) The Lake
Effect by Nancy Nichols Publisher: Shearwater; 2 edition (August 30, 2010)
Paperback: 192 pages
(56) Asbestos Plant In Waukegan Nears The End, Chicago
Tribune, Oct 10, 2000
(57) A
lesson in history: Founder of bankrupt Johns Manville died of asbestos-related
illness
(58)
Asbestos-ridden lakefront land remains in limbo in Waukegan Dan Moran
Contact Reporter News-Sun
July 2,2015
(1) To remove place; is a
menace Waukegan Daily News Wed Sept 1, 1926, p1
To remove place; is a menace
Complaints received about Market
street flats as unsanitary; listed often in cops’ reports
The “Red Flats,” a two-story frame
structure containing four flats in which a number of colored families live and
located on the east side of Market street about 150 feet south of the foot of
Water street was condemned yesterday and ordered removed by Sept 10 by
assistant Building Commissioner Walter H. Nibbelink. The notice was served on
the building owner, H. H. Beach of Waukegan and in all probability the city will
have to tear down the building according to Nibbelink.
The city officials regard the
condemning of this building as the best move made by the building department
since orders were given two weeks ago by mayor L. J. (?) to rid the city of
buildings which are unsafe and thus a (?) to the city. The building has long
been an “eyesore” to the city.
Get complaints
Complaints regarding the “Red Flats”
not being safe and sanitation in the place being bad and the flats overcrowded
have been checked (?) up by health department of the city for years and
improvements ordered continually. Nibbelink, after making a thorough inspection
took drastic action as he says that the building is in such shape that
improvements would not aid materially.
The assistant building commissioner
says that he is at a loss to understand how the building remains standing, it
appearing to him that there is nothing to prevent the place from collapsing in
a heavy storm or even when the wind is strong. Extracts from his report
regarding the defects in the “Red Flats” follow:
“The floor joice is decayed. The
ceiling is decayed. The ceiling joice in some places is resting on only two
nails. The roof is decidedly weak and the east and north walls bulge out
considerably. The rear porch is about to collapse. There are no toilets in the
building.”
Is disease breeder
Health commissioners in Waukegan
have raised objections to the sanitation of the “Red Flats” claiming it has
been a breeding place for diseases…
(2) Modern Apollo found in Howard Beach, Waukegan,
Libertyville Independent, Jan 3, 1918, P6
Modern
Apollo found in Howard Beach, Waukegan
Waukegan resident, in examination at Naval Station is
found to be perfect man
Teeth, hearing, eyesight
Besides these things, his measurements, weight, etc. are
100 per cent
Who is the Apollo of Waukegan?
It’s never been brought out before, but it’s been
discovered now.
It’s Howard Beach, youngest son of Harry Beach, formerly
of the Beach Garage.
That is, he’s the Waukegan Apollo if the 100 per cent
physical examination given him by the head surgeon of the Naval Station counted
for anything and Judging from the manner in which they turn them down at Great
Lakes, it must mean something to have 100 per cent credit given to a man.
Beach, who is 24 years old, joined the navy six months
ago, entering as truck driver with the rank of machinist, second class. He was
there but a month when placed in charge of all the trucks. After three months
he was promoted to machinist first class and has been promoted to the rank of
chief machinist, the highest salaried position at the station. He has charge of
all the eighty to ninety of the trucks, having 109 men under him.
In submitting to the examination Beach was told by the
surgeon that:
He had 100 per cent teeth (not a filling of any
sort—every tooth perfect except one where, when a lad, he cracked it biting a
nut.)
100 per cent hearing
100 per cent eyesight
Furthermore his measurements and weight were exactly what
they should be for a perfect man as follows:
Weight—142 pounds
Height—5 feet, 7 inches
Waist—30
Chest—contracted 32 ½ inches; expanded 36 ¾ inches
“100 per cent perfect” is what the surgeon said to Beach
when he had finished. There may be others who have attained 100 per cent in all
the tests, but not any from Waukegan, and probably very few anywhere in the
service.
Never sick—but
The interesting thing about his examination, however, is
this: he had not been sick for 10 years. However, a week after being accepted
by the navy, he was taken with a severe cold, tonsillitis developed and he was
forced to go home for three days. Whether the 100 per cent credit was too much
for him isn’t known but the local Apollo is again OK and doing his bit at the
station.
(3) Hears son is
wedded from her grocery man, Libertyville Independent, Aug 23, 1917, p 13
Hears
son is wedded from her grocery man,
First knowledge Mrs. H H Beach has son Howard was wedded
came today
“He slipped one over”
None of his friends knew he planned the step—now in
charge of US trucks
Waukegan Aug 22
Howard Beach, son of Mrs. and Mrs. H H Beach of north
County street, who for a number of years was office manager of his father’s
garage on Genesee street sprung a surprise on his parents and friends Tuesday
evening when he slipped over to Justice Balz residence and was united in
marriage to Miss Thelma Beaudreau of Fond du Lac, Wis. That it was a complete
surprise on relatives and friends is indicated by the fact that Mr. Beach’s
mother this morning admitted that she knew nothing of her son’s plans until she
happened to hear it in a round about way this morning, that they were keeping
house on Grand avenue.
It seems that a local grocery man, in talking to Mrs.
Beach Sr today remarked: “Well, I got an order this morning from Mrs. Howard
Beach.”
“Mrs. Howard each?” asked the mother in amazement.
“Sure, didn’t you know about it?” queried the grocery
man, adding: “They are living out on Grand avenue.”
“Don’t know a thing about it,” said the surprised mother.
She however admitted that she had known that her son was
keeping company with the young lady from Fond du Lac and expected that their
marriage would take place in the not distant future. However, she knew nothing
of immediate plans.
Mr. Beach is 24 years old and his wife is 18.
Beach enlisted in the navy some time ago and has been
promoted until at present he is in charge of about 70 trucks at the training
station. His experience in garage work evidently made him especially fit for
this line of work. T is understood he is to be promoted and made a chief petty
officer as a result of having been given the additional responsibility.
The bride is somewhat known in Waukegan, being the sister
of the young man who plays the organ at the Academy theater. She has visited
him here frequently.
(4) Mrs. Putnam is
killed when limited strikes auto Libertyville Independent Aug 17, 1916, p1
Mrs.
Putnam is killed when limited strikes auto
Terrible accident Sunday evening near Great Lakes Naval
Station crossing.
Mr. Putnam and Harry Beach are both hurt
Neither much injured—couple out for ride when tragedy
occurred—Beach driving.
Mrs. Charles Putnam, wife of the superintendent of the
American Steel and Wire company plant at Waukegan met almost instant death
Sunday evening at about 8 o’clock at Downey’s crossing at the south boundary of
the Naval Training Station when a Chicago & Milwaukee Electric limited
train struck an auto in which she was driving.
Her husband, the superintendent, and Harry H Beach,
driver of the auto and owner of the Beach Garage, met injuries as follows:
Mr. Putnam—bad cut on leg, bad cut on head, badly bruised
side
Mr. Beach—bad cut on forehead and hand.
Mr. Beach’s injuries were not so bad as was at first
feared and he was able to go home late Sunday evening.
Mr. Putnam’s injuries are not of a nature that he will
sustain any permanent affects, but may be in the hospital for a few days.
The accident was due to failure of any of the party to
note the limited train which, like they, was going south and which at that
point had just emerged from the subway coming from the North Chicago junction.
Out for a ride
Mr. and Mrs. Putnam frequently have gone out riding
Sunday evening, hiring the Beach Garage auto. Many times Mr. Beach himself had
taken them out. He is considered a very careful driver and they left Waukegan
Sunday evening for a short ride, taking their time and not having any point in
particular in mind as to where they were going.
They made their way down through North Chicago and turned
south to go past the Naval Station. According to Mr. Beach they were
approaching the Downey crossing—the road which leads west to Green Bay road and
which is a fine concrete stretch—when he turned to Mr. Putnam and said “which
way shall we go?”
"Turn right here,” replied Mr. Putnam and forth with Mr.
Beach swung his wheel to turn west and cross the electric and Northwestern
tracks.
That fatal turn was what cost the life of Mrs. Putnam and
injured the two men. The conclusion is that Mr Beach in turning to ask Mr.
Putnam the question temporarily took his mind from the railroad crossing and
therefore he failed to note the fact that a limited train of the electric was
coming out of the subway, having just passed the Great Lakes station….
The accident caused general surprise in the community
because Mr. Beach is regarded as on of the most careful drivers in the city. He
is slow-going ordinarily, he doesn’t act fast and how he ever crossed the
electric tracks without first making certain that the line was clear is hard to
understand especially in his case. Mr. Putnam has never owned a car of his own,
his desire being to rent one whenever he and Mrs. Putnam wished to ride. …
Harry H Beach, owner of the big Chambers auto in which
Mr. And Mrs. Putnam were riding when they met with their terrible accident of
Sunday night this morning gave this version of the accident to the Sun while
standing in the yard of his home at County and Franklin streets, bemoaning the
tragedy as keenly as if one of his own family had been killed….
When told of the fatality Mr. Beach felt so terribly over
it that his relatives and friends feared he might even attempt to take his own
life in despair over what had taken place, indirectly, through him.
Mrs. Beach and daughter arrived home late this afternoon
from Kansas.
(5) ‘Open’ verdict returned; Beach employs lawyer
Libertyville Independent, Thursday Aug 25, 1916
‘Open’
verdict returned
Jury holds no man or corporation responsible for Mrs.
Putnam’s death
The Chicago & Milwaukee Electric railroad was not
held responsible for the death of Mrs. Charles Putnam; neither was Harry H
Beach in whose automobile Mr. and Mrs. Putnam were passengers when the former
met injury and the latter death last Sunday night.
The coroner’s jury was returned an open verdicts. This
verdict merely recites what happened and holds no man or corporation
responsible for the death of the wife of the wire mill superintendent.
.
(6)
(Waukegan police raid opium joint, Libertyville independent Friday Aug 13,
1909, p1)
Waukegan
police raid opium joint
Midnight
raid reads like Nick Carter novel and not like a piece of darkest Waukegan
exposed to the limelight—first time on record where opium den has been raided
in the city—six women give up autumn leaf secrets
Saturday
night at 10:30 Chiefs Conolly and Tyrrell of the police department knocked at
the door of the colored people’s Autumn Leaf club at 211 Market street, walked
in and claim to have discovered as a result in lieu of the club:
1.
An alleged disorderly resort with six alleged women inmates
2.
An opium joint, with a pipe, dope card, needles, a couch and one woman victim
dead to the world, the door having to be smashed to wake her
3.
One alleged crap game in full operation
4.
Alleged illegal liquor selling
The
police were attracted to the place by complaints of neighbors in the district.
Entering
they found negro men and women about a crap able playing to beat the band. The
women were not in the game.
Instead,
the police claim, they were scantily attired in negligee dress, some even
wearing alleged robes de nuit.
In
one small room chief Tyrrell found the woman opium pipe victim. The door was
locked and had to be kicked in. The woman, aroused, said she had not heard the
noise. She had been smoking an ivory-stemmed opium pipe. The odor of the drug
was in the air.
The
woman had taken a pill of opium, the can of which was hidden away, put it on
the pipe bowl after it had been heated over a candle, inhaled the fumes and
gone to sleep. The pipe is wound in bicycle tape and evidently had been leaking.
The
six women were all taken to the police station and put through the third
degree. They are said to have given damaging evidence to show the alleged true
character of the Autumn Leaf club. The case was called for 10 o’clock this
morning and the women, none of whom were really arrested, were instructed to
appear, but as they did not do so, the suspicion is that they fled. The police
regard this as a good thing.
The
police say that G W “Son” Robinson is the proprietor of the club and lodging
house upstairs and that both places are under one management.
None
of the men were arrested.
The
woman who was found dead drunk from poppy fumes was a chocolate hued blue grass
belle who came from Chicago.
The
police claim to have evidence of the six women and say they are well able to
take care of the Autumn leaf at once…
(7) Dismisses suit against Keeler Belvidere Daily
Republican, Belvidere, Illinois, Fri Oct 27, 1911, p12
Dismisses
suit against Keeler
Waukegan man asks Judge Whitney to dismiss libel suit for
$25,000 which he had against former well known Belvedere man
Waukegan Oct 23—Walter Chipley, colored, employed by the
Corn Products Refining company, has dropped his $25,000 libel suit against the
defunct newspaper The Waukegan Evening News.
His attorney, Elmer V Orvis, yesterday petitioned Judge
Charles Whitney of the circuit court to strike the case from the trial docket.
Chipley brought suit against the newspaper claiming they
had slandered him by printing a story in which he was credited with operating a
disorderly house known as the Oak Leaf Club on Market Street. The Waukegan
Evening News and the late A H Keeler its editor were named as defendants in the
suit.
(8)
Wife beater is given a sentence of 30 days in Jail Lake County Independent and
Waukegan Weekly Sun , Oct 5, 1916, p6
Wife
beater is given a sentence of 30 days in Jail
Waukegan
Sept 29
Because
his wife refuses him a kiss at midnight William Hudson, a colored man living at
211 Market street discolored her right eye with a blow from his fist, and as a
result he will serve 30 days in the county jail for the beating of his wife.
“He
is a good man when he’s sober, which ain’t very often. Every time he gets drunk,
he fights. He went to ‘de colored club’ at 10 o’clock last night and when he
returned home he was beastly drunk. Then he wanted to “love me.” He wanted to
kiss me, but I wouldn’t let any drunken man kiss me. He got sore and struck me
a blow in the eye with his fist, den I had him pinched,” said the colored
woman.
"I
didn’t mean it,” wailed the colored boy.
“Well
you can take it from me that I mean it when I say 30 days in the county jail
for you,” said Walter Taylor, police magistrate.
Upon
inquiry the police officials learned that Hudson got his booze at the “colored
club,” a joint run by Ike Franklin on Sheridan road. Hudson claims to have a
locker at the club. He says that Franklin is operating a locker club.
The
police are conducting an investigation, and it is possible that other arrests
will be made during the day.
“I
ain’t been at de club since our child was born. I used to go there before that.
They sold booze there then, but I don’t know how they serve it now, said Mrs.
Hudson.
She
claims that her husband has assaulted her on more than one occasion and she
also alleges that her husband threw their child out of bed while under the
influence of liquor.
The
colored club is conducted by Ike Franklin, the colored man who figured
prominently in a resent primary election. He works as a porter in a cigar
store.
(9)
Warmoth Hudson is under arrest; Libertyville independent Feb 7, 1918, P6
Warmoth
Hudson is under arrest;
A
draft evader?
Police
say he claims exemption on charge he has wife and 2 children
Warmoth
Hudson, colored, aged 29, residing at 211 Market street was arrested by
Waukegan police Fridsay afternoon about 4 o’clock on the charge of disorderly
conduct. Back of his arrest lies the veiled charge that he may be a draft
evader, as the police assert the fellow claimed exemption from serving in the
national army on the ground that he has a wife and two children.
Hudson,
who gave his first name as “Walter” when he registered for the draft is said by
the police to have admitted he is not married to the woman with whom he has
been living. When he was arraigned before police magistrate Taylor this
morning he insisted he was married.
“I
don’t believe he was married and I have taken the matter up with the draft
board,” assistant police chief Tyrrell asserted this morning. “The woman he
calls his wife is now in the general hospital where she had an operation
performed. There are two little children at home. Hudson expected them to get
along three weeks on $4 he gave them. There was no fuel in the house and the
children were in a pitiful condition when supervisor Bairstow was called in. He
is caring for them now.”
Husdon’s
case was continued for 10 days and his bond is fixed at $1,000. In the meantime
the draft board will make inquiries.
(10)
2 under arrest as result of a shooting scrape Libertyville independent, April
8, 1920, p12
2
under arrest as result of a shooting scrape
Walter
Nuby, colored man, shot through his arm at a dance early today
Assailant gives
self up
Walter Nuby, aged 18 a colored man living at 211 Market street received a shot in his arm early this morning—not a shot of (?) Walter will tell the world that…But a real bone to…(?) …inflicted by a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of Sam Morris, aged 47 also colored, living at 212 east Lake street. Both men are under arrest on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon. They were arraigned in police court this morning…(?)… Bail was fixed at $10,000 each.
Nuby showed no enmity against Morris this morning, asserting that they always had been best of friends. The drinking of “raisin (?) Mash” he said befuddled both of them and Morris lost his head and opened fire following a hot dispute over money.
The shooting took place in the Market street building where a number of colored people were holding a danced. According to Nuby he gave someone a ten dollar bill to cash and forgot who he had given it to. Someone told Morris. When he asked Morris to (?) and insisted on it’s being done there were hot words and the shooting started. Morris had…(?) The police were informed that Nuby also shot but he later denied…(?) he admitted however that he had had a gun.
Morris hurried from the building after the shooting and went to the home of asst. Chief Tyrrell where he said he thought he had shot a woman and wanted to give himself up. He was removed to the police station. At the same time the police patrol (?) was sent to Market street and Nuby was taken to the hospital where his arm was dressed. He then was returned to the police station. The shooting is said to have taken place between two and three o’clock this morning.
Walter Nuby, aged 18 a colored man living at 211 Market street received a shot in his arm early this morning—not a shot of (?) Walter will tell the world that…But a real bone to…(?) …inflicted by a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of Sam Morris, aged 47 also colored, living at 212 east Lake street. Both men are under arrest on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon. They were arraigned in police court this morning…(?)… Bail was fixed at $10,000 each.
Nuby showed no enmity against Morris this morning, asserting that they always had been best of friends. The drinking of “raisin (?) Mash” he said befuddled both of them and Morris lost his head and opened fire following a hot dispute over money.
The shooting took place in the Market street building where a number of colored people were holding a danced. According to Nuby he gave someone a ten dollar bill to cash and forgot who he had given it to. Someone told Morris. When he asked Morris to (?) and insisted on it’s being done there were hot words and the shooting started. Morris had…(?) The police were informed that Nuby also shot but he later denied…(?) he admitted however that he had had a gun.
Morris hurried from the building after the shooting and went to the home of asst. Chief Tyrrell where he said he thought he had shot a woman and wanted to give himself up. He was removed to the police station. At the same time the police patrol (?) was sent to Market street and Nuby was taken to the hospital where his arm was dressed. He then was returned to the police station. The shooting is said to have taken place between two and three o’clock this morning.
(11)
Slashes Negro whom he thinks took his watch Libertyville independent, Nov 23,
1922, p9
Slashes
Negro whom he thinks took his watch
Muncie
Baily charged with assault with deadly weapon Sunday
Victim in the hospital
Muncie Baily, 41 years old, a negro residing at 113 Market street was placed under arrest Sunday afternoon at 3:30 o’clock on a charge of stabbing James Green, 38 years old, also colored, of 211 Lake street. Green, weak from loss of blood, was removed by the police to the victory memorial hospital where he received emergency treatment. He was attended by Dr. M J Kaye. The stabbing took place in a negro residence.
The police received a call about (?) 3:15 o’clock Sunday afternoon that a man had been stabbed. They found Green suffering from a long gash on the head and minor cuts on the wrist and palm where he had sought to ward off the keen-edged knife wielded by his assailant. He was rushed to the hospital where it was feared for some time that the severe loss of blood would prove fatal.
The officers hurried back to the café where the stabbing affair had taken place. Bailey was just in the act of walking across the street casually having made no attempt to get away. He was removed to the police station where a charge of assault with a deadly weapon was placed against him.
According to the police he admitted the stabbing. He is alleged to have told then that he was informed Saturday night by a friend that Green had stolen a watch he had missed a few days before. He is said to have admitted that he started out at once to find Green but was not successful until Sunday afternoon.
Bailey was arraigned in court today. His case was continued for ten days pending the outcome of the victim’s condition. Bonds were fixed at $500.
Muncie Baily, 41 years old, a negro residing at 113 Market street was placed under arrest Sunday afternoon at 3:30 o’clock on a charge of stabbing James Green, 38 years old, also colored, of 211 Lake street. Green, weak from loss of blood, was removed by the police to the victory memorial hospital where he received emergency treatment. He was attended by Dr. M J Kaye. The stabbing took place in a negro residence.
The police received a call about (?) 3:15 o’clock Sunday afternoon that a man had been stabbed. They found Green suffering from a long gash on the head and minor cuts on the wrist and palm where he had sought to ward off the keen-edged knife wielded by his assailant. He was rushed to the hospital where it was feared for some time that the severe loss of blood would prove fatal.
The officers hurried back to the café where the stabbing affair had taken place. Bailey was just in the act of walking across the street casually having made no attempt to get away. He was removed to the police station where a charge of assault with a deadly weapon was placed against him.
According to the police he admitted the stabbing. He is alleged to have told then that he was informed Saturday night by a friend that Green had stolen a watch he had missed a few days before. He is said to have admitted that he started out at once to find Green but was not successful until Sunday afternoon.
Bailey was arraigned in court today. His case was continued for ten days pending the outcome of the victim’s condition. Bonds were fixed at $500.
(12) Negro thief is captured after chase by
police Libertyville independent, Jan 13, 1921, p12
Negro thief is captured after chase
by police
Negro
stops after officer fires shot; says he stole because he was starving
Bound to grand
jury Tony was arraigned in police court before police magistrate Walter Taylor
this morning. He entered the plea of “guilty” to the charge of larceny and was
bound to the grand jury in bonds of $1,000. He went to the county jail in
default of getting bail and will remain there awaiting action of the grand jury
which does not meet until March. Efficient work on the part of members of the
Waukegan police department resulted in the capture large Tuesday afternoon of
Andrew Tony, aged 21, a negro residing at 217 Market street. Tony is charged
with having grabbed a $20 bill at the Model Laundry Tuesday afternoon about 2
o’clock and then escaping by dashing out of the door and racing in the
direction of Market street. The bill which the negro took was part of the
weekly payroll amounting to nearly $500. The thing which puzzles the police is
why Tony did not take the whole entire amount instead of merely one bill. A J
Burton, proprietor of the laundry pursued Tony to Market street and saw him
rush into his home. In the meantime a call had been sent to the police station
and Policeman John Klindsworth and special policeman John Rahling responded in
the police automobile. Policeman Thomas Booth was dispatched to Market street
when a second call was received to the effect that the negro had been seen
leaving his house and start south in Market street, turning up the south avenue
hill. Believing that Tony might have taken a street car south, Policeman
Klindsworth stepped on the gas and raced to the north Chicago junction, beating
the limited train on the North shore line. When the car arrived it was found
the at the negro was not on board. The police car started back, going over a
course which it was thought the negro might have taken. This course led to Edison
Court depot, but he was not there and had not been seen. The care then started
east in Washington street. In the machine with the two officers was a negro who
had been washing windows at the laundry and who recognized Tony. As the machine
neared Park avenue the negro cried out: “There he is! That’s him coming this
way.” The car was brought to a stop and the officer leaped out. As soon as Tony
saw them approaching he started to run south along the ravine where the new
park is being built. Officer Rahling drew his pistol and fired one shot. Tony
dropped to the ground as if he had been shot, holding both hands in the air. He
was searched, but was found to be without a weapon. He was taken to the police
station and locked up. Needed the money “I have been living in Waukegan about
eight months,: Tony said. “I was working in at the tannery but lost my job
three weeks ago. I haven’t been able to get anything to do. We haven’t a thing
in the house to eat. My wife recently had an operation for appendicitis and needed
good food, but I did not have the money to buy if for her. She also needed
medicine and I could not buy it. This was what drove me to steal the money. I
couldn’t bare to see my wife slowly starving to death.” Officers went to the
house where Tony has been living and found his wife about ready top go. She had
packed their belongings and the officers believe she was planning to meet her
husband some place, believing that he had made good his escape. She turned over
to them the $20 bill her husband had stolen.
(13)
Claim colored woman disorderly
Libertyville Independent, Aug 17, 1922
Claim
colored woman disorderly
Waukegan,
Aug 16
Market
Street, frayed with derelicts while the artery is bathed in sunlight but wildly
throbbing with a night life when the sun passes down behind the Northwestern
tracks, in in gloom. Florence Witmore, pretty as beauty goes with the colored
element on the “Gold Coast”, lies in the county jail.
Constable
Brame (?) according to his report, found the good queen in the Red Flats with a
prominent young man. Indignantly she was hauled in the sponge squad car to
Justice Harvey Coulson, who soother her moist eyes with a $500 (?) bond, which
her henchmen couldn’t procure. She was delegated to the House of Green until
her hearing next week.
(14) Buildings condemned here today Waukegan Daily News, Thurs Sept 2, 1926, p1
Buildings condemned here today
Market street flats are included in
new list of those to be destroyed under building ordinance
The buildings department campaign to
have buildings in Waukegan which are in an unsafe condition or which are over
50 per cent destroyed torn down continues unabated, three more buildings being
condemned today by Walter H Nibbelink, assistant building commissioner. The
three places must be removed by Sept 15 or the city will tear them down,
Nibbelink says.
The principle building condemned
today is a two story flat building at 603 Market street known in that district
as a second “Red Flats.” There are eight flats in the building but only three
are occupied, it is said.
Supervisor George Bairstow is said
to be the building owner and upon his return from the convention at Geneva he
will be served with a notice to remove his building.
Walls bulging
Included among the building defects,
according to Nibbelink are bulging walls, cracked foundation, ceiling joists
torn away, a cracked chimney, probably about to collapse, and a sagging roof.
B Janowitz (?) of Waukegan was
notified today to remove a building at 211 Market Street. The building is a two
story frame structure and at the present time is unoccupied. A hamburger (?)
and restaurant was formerly located in the place. Nibbelink says walls are bad,
the ceiling weak and the floors and roof are in dangerous condition….
…Nibbelink announced today that
lumber from buildings torn down by the city will be given away. He requests
that anyone wanting lumber and willing to haul it away notify him this week.
(15) Has three of
his own yet he has room for 4th Libertyville Independent, April 4,
1918, p9
Has
three of his own yet he has room for 4th
Supervisor George Bairstow shows kindness for unfortunate
little foreigner
Anybody who limits the kindness of heart of Supervisor
George Bairstow, poor master of Waukegan township, as merely to know the fact
that Mr. Bairstow, despite the presence in his home of three of his own
children, has taken in another little child and plans at the present time to
keep it indefinitely.
This child comes from a poor family on the south side and
Mr. Bauirstow has had it since Christmas time. He and his wife have become
attached to the little thing and while he has not legally adopted it, it
appears evident that the supervisor and poormaster will keep the girl as long
as her parents are willing to leave her with them. In view of the high cost of
living, this kindness on the part of the supervisor cannot go unnoticed among
those of the community who have elected Mr. Bairstow to office repeatedly
because it shows the keen interest in his line of work as supervisor and
poormaster
(16) Bairstow made
defendant in $10,000 suit, Thursday February 1, 1923, p 1The Antioch News
Bairstow
made defendant in $10,000 suit,
George Bairstow, candidate for re-election as supervisor
of Waukegan township, was made defendant in a suit for $10,000 personal damages
filed in the circuit court by John S Heath of JS Heath mfg co of Waukegan.
Following an unavoidable collision at Grand avenue and
Copunty street Wednesday evening, Bairstow sailed into Mr Heath, a man of 55
years of age and weighing less than 150 pounds, knocked out two teeth, broke
off one and loosened six others, as well as cutting his right ear.
According to witnesses, Mr Heath, who was returning home
from his office in the terminal, was driving north on county street. His wife
was with him. As he approached Garnd avenue, the car ahead acted as though it
was going to stop at the armory. Mr Heath turned out into the car tracks to
pass just at that moment, Mr Bairstow came swinging out of Grand avenue, south
onto Copunty street, also going into the car tracks. The bumpers of the two
cars hit, and the pavement being ley, the cars swung around in such a manner
that the rear ends collided.
Mr Heath drew to the curb. He got out and went back to
where Mr. Bairstow had parked. As he approached he remarked: “If our bumpers
had not hit, we could have got by all right.”
Without any warning whatever, according to witnesses,
Bairstow drew back and struck Mr Heath a stunning blow to the mouth, causing
the damage to his teeth. A second blow landed on Mr Heath’;s right ear, causing
blood to flow and render him amost unconscious.
“You’re going down to the police station with me,”
Bairstow said. But, although badly beaten, Mr. Heath replied that he would go
to the police station after he had taken his wife home. The latter had been
injured in the collision, being thrown forward in such a manner that she hurt
her right eye and wrenched her knee.
“No you’re not,” Bairstow continued as he tried to
dominate Heath in going at once to the station. After the latter had got into
his own car, Barirstow jumped on the running board and crowded himself into a
seat regardless of the fact that he was now in the company of a lady.
“Drive to the police station,” Bairstow commanded, but
once again Mr. Heath declared that he was going to drive his wife home first.
“Well, who the hell are you anyway?” Bairstow asked.
“I’ll tell you who I am,” Mrs. Heath spoke up and she
revealed her identity. Whereupon Bairstow realized he had pulled the prize
mistake of his career.
“Beg Pardon,” he said as he climbed out of the car.
“Guess I made a mistake.”
And with that Mr. Heath drove on and escorted his wife
home, after which he reported the collision end of the affair to the police.
(17) Want Orphanage, not anxious for a detention
home Libertyville Independent June 27m 1918, p2
Want Orphanage, not anxious for a
detention home
Officers of humane society declare they now are
taking care of truants
Explain society’s views
Mrs Morris and Mrs Hutchinson declare efforts have
been misunderstood
In connection with the movement launched at the
board of supervisors last week by which the county court is to be asked to
include in the November ballot the question as to whether the county shall be
permitted to erect and maintain a detention home for dependents, delinquents,
or truant children and to levy a tax of not more than one mill on each dollar
valuation to pay the cost thereof, it develops there is a diversion of opinion
and that the ideas in promoting the institution have been somewhat at variance.
Officers of the Humane Society called on the daily
Sun and explained that the understanding of the Humane society and other women
in the city has been that the movement was for the purpose of providing “orphanage”
for Lake county children rather than “a home for dependent, delinquent or
truant children.”
A home for dependent children erected in the nature
of a detention home is meant merely to provide for children’s temporary care.
Under no circumstances can children be sent there as they can be sent to an
orphanage. It is a acerwhere the women declare there is a misapprehension of
the desires and intentions in that the real need is more for an orphanage now
then for a detention home.
However, it is a detention home which judge Persons
has been urging for a long time, and which poormaster Bairstow and others
connected with the county court have urged the necessity of. The women of the Humane Society, however, point out the
fact that the Humane Society has been maintaining a detention home at the home
of Miss Himmelreich on the north side and they claim that that institution for
a long time will take care of the delinquent children for the time they are
supposed to be cared for in such an institution.
Need of orphanage keen
The women urged the necessity of having a real
orphanage provided for Lake county children and declare that the efforts they
have spent so far have been along this line rather than along the line of
providing for a detention home. They insist that the time is coming when there
are going to be a lot more orphans in Lake county who must be cared for and who
cannot be taken into the lake Bluff orphanage. The orphanage is crowded and has
been crowded for such a time and in some cases.
The women are very pronounced in their desire to
have an orphanage provided rather than a detention home and were not backward
about saying that they would not continue their efforts to encourage the public
to vote for the plan as outlined now for a detention home.
(18) Publish names of county’s poor in future
Libertyville Independent, October 5, 1922, p9
Publish
names of county’s poor in future
Supervisors vote to do this in effort to stop $60,000 a
year “leak”
Caused much discussion
Members of the board of supervisors were starled Tuesday
afternoon when supervisor Eichler of highland Park made a motion to have the
names of all those receiving aid from the county bublished. The motion brought
a storm of disapproval from many memebers who regarded such a list as a great
huimiation tio the deriving poor of this county.
Supervisors Eichler and Vercoe declared that it is the
only waay to stop a $60,000 a yuear “leak” in the county’s expenses, and the
latter declared there probably are many persons receiving such aid who are not
in need of it and if such a list were published they would not think of
accepting it. They declared that the time has come when something must be done
to stop the leak. Supervisor Eicher said that it is no disgrace to be poor and
that if he were a bankrupt he would not object to having it published. It is a
business proposition, he said.
Supervisors Obee, Samson, Crapo and a number of others
declared that such action would be a source of humiliation to children of deserving
poor who go to school. Supervisor Bairstow declared that he has a list of all
those who receive aid through him as poormaster of Waukegan and that if anyone
wants to see this list at any time to ascertain whether it contains any not
deserving they can do so. He declared there also is a list in the hands of the
county clerk. He said he is not in favor of publication of such a list in the
newspapers.
The discussion brought up the fact that there is a law
making publication necessary. Supervisor Eger stated that the practice was
discontinued a number of years ago by the supervisors on the ground that it was
humiliating to the deserving poor.
The supervisors after lengthy discussion voted that
hereafter the list was to be published.
(19) Grand Jury names six in Lake county fund shortage
July 28, 1927, The Antioch News, p1
Grand
Jury names six in Lake county fund shortage
Bracher and associates are indicted—Bairstow also held
Four true bills were returned by the grand jury of Lake
county yesterday indicting five in connection with the shortage of funds in the
treasurer’s office and one in connection with a shortage in the funds of
Waukegan township. Bill number one indicted county treasurer Roy Bracher on a
charge of embezzlement. Number two named Roy Baracher, Ira Pearsall, Harold
Martin, Caleb Busick and Clark C Nye on a charge of conspiring to embezzle
$100,000 from the county treasury in 1922. The third named Bracher, Pearsall
and Martin for conspiracy in the alleged taking of $33,000 as interest on
county deposits and the fourth named George Bairstow with withholding $60,000
in township funds.
The action of the grand jury had been expected from the
first. After the returning of the indictments, col Smith gave the following
statement:
“The indictments voted by the grand jury will be
prosecuted without reference to payment. They will be prosecuted vigorously and
with force, fairly, impartially and without malice. Cases will be set for trial
on the second Monday (Oct 10) of October,” he wrote.
Bracher to repay money
Meanwhile Roy Bracher, county superintendent has handed
in his resignation as treasurer to take effect when the board of county
commissioners desire, and has raised through advances of his friends the sum of
money to cover his shortages as treasurer. Friends of the treasurer take the
stand that Bracher deposited the money in the bank at Eureka Kansas in good
faith without any intention of defrauding the county and that he only civilly
liable for the amount of the deficit.
The case is to be heard in the October term of the court
and it is probable that attorneys representing each of the defendants in the
county shortage will file pleas of not guilty and ask for a separate trial,
which would materially help the defense.
All of the men arraigned are released on bond with the
exception of Nye who is not in Waukegan and for whom a writ has been ordered by
the court.
Bracher’s resignation will be accepted, according to
statements of members of the board of supervisors, and it seems certain at
present that JB Morse, deputy county clerk will be appointed to succeed Bracher
until the election next spring.
(20) 'Illinois Blue Book 1963-1964,' Biographical Sketch
of Jack E. Bairstow, pg. 266
Jack E. Bairstow (February 7, 1902 – October 28, 1963)
was an American lawyer and politician.
Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Bairstow received his
law degree from University of Illinois College of Law in 1925 and
then practiced law in Waukegan. He was the corporate counsel for the City of
Waukegan and city attorney for Highland, Illinois. He was a Democrat.
He served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1953 until
his death in 1963. He died in Waukegan, Illinois of circulatory problems.
(21) 'Rep.
Bairstow of Waukegan Dies At Age 61,' Chicago Tribune, October 29,
1963, Section 2, page 7
(22) The McHenry
Plaindealer, McHenry, Illinois, Thu Dec 16, 1926, p8
A fire which completely wiped out the entire store of
Tony Grobelch of Waukegan last Tuesday night is thought to have been started by
a mouse gnawing into a box of matches. The fire was discovered by Dr. Beck, who
occupies the second floor of the building. He was awakened by his police dog
and immediately sent the alarm. Grobelch estimated his loss at $10,000
(23) "Market St. blaze in Waukegan causes $1,000
damage.," Independent Register (Libertyville, Lake County, Illinois: Frank
H. Just), 27 Nov 1930, p. 9
(24) Junk Dealer is burned by refrigerator gas Chicago
Tribune, Fri Feb 16, 1951, p20
Junk
Dealer is burned by refrigerator gas
Nure Emin, 51, owner of a junk shop at 210 Market st
Waukegan suffered severe face burns yesterday when ammonia gas in a
refrigerator exploded during a trash fire in his yard
(25) $36,000 Fire destroys warehouse in Waukegan Chicago
Tribune, Thursday, Oct 2, 1952
Fire
destroys warehouse in Waukegan
Fire destroyed a warehouse containing more than 100 tons
of baled paper, magazines and rags yesterday in the junk yard of Nure Emin at
210 Market st Waukegan. Emin estimated the loss at $36,000. Firemen said the
blaze apparently started from spontaneous combustion inside the warehouse or
from a rubbish fire nearby.
(26) ‘Haven’t got
nothing’ Tuscon Daily Citizen, Tuscon, Arizona, Mon Dec 14, 1953, p30
‘Haven’t
got nothing’
Teacher speaks for child who died in slum fire
Waukegan, Ill-(AP) Five year old Audrey Saunders has been
buried.
A child’s funeral shortly before Christmas is generally
especially tragic.
Audrey died in a slum fire, along with er mother, brother
sister and a six-month old baby. She was buried Saturday.
Audrey’s kindergarten teacher wrote a letter about her
former pupil which was printed in the Waukegan News-Sun. It read
“Audrey Saunders, 5 years old was buried Saturday after
the inquest into the fitre on Marjketa street. She cannot speak for herself and
tell you all she learned in her life, but she told me and through me she can
tell you.
“At Thanksgiving time I went through the kindergarten
teacher’s normal routine of explaining the meaning of the word “thankful”
“I made suggestions of my own such as sunshine, birds and
snow, that we all share. The children then took turns adding to the list.
“Many of the children told of their dreams like electric
trains and walkie-talkie dolls that they planned to be thankful for if Santa
brought them.
“Audrey sat waiting her turn in her sad and serious way.
When I called her name she looked up at me with her too-knowing brown eyes and
said, ‘reacher, I’m not thankful for nothing.’
“She read the question on my face and added, ‘But teacher
I haven’t got nothing.’
“She was in school with me the day before she died. I
brought out a large carton of old Christmas cards for the children to look at.
“All of the children except Audrey searched for Santa
Claus and snow man cards.
“Audrey made a pile of religious cards and sat in the
corner singing to every baby Jesus and kissing his picture.”
The letter was signed Louis Boches, a teacher at
McAlister Lincoln kindergarten.
(27) PROBE BLAZE WHICH KILLED 5 IN WAUKEGAN Mt. Vernon
Register-News Mt Vernon, Illinois Monday, December 7, 1953, Page 5
PROBE
BLAZE WHICH KILLED 5 IN WAUKEGAN
Fire From Kerosene Lamp Routed 35 From Building
By AP WAUKEGAN, Ill. — State's Attorney Robert C. Nelson
of Lake County, said today he will begin a grand jury investigation of possible
criminal responsibility for a fire that caused five deaths in Waukegan early
Sunday. The fire routed more than 35 residents from the building at 538 Market
St. The victims, all residents of basement apartments, were Mrs Ophelia
Sanders, 43; her three children, Minnie, 11, James, 8. and Audrey, 5, and Sally
McGee 5 months old. Deputy Coroner Jack Dale said they apparently were
suffocated by smoke. Fire Chief Norman Litz said the fire started in the
apartment of Samuel McGee, 22, and his wife Ammies, 20, parents of one of the
victims, apparently from a kerosene stove or lamp. Litz said it quickly spread
to the Sander's apartment next door. The McGees had been visiting neighbors
with two other children. When Mrs. McGee learned of the fire she ran into the
apartment and carried out a bundle of blankets from the crib. She believed she
had the baby in the blankets and had to be restrained from reentering the
building when she discovered her mistake. Damage estimated by Litz was $5,000.
(28) ASK GRAND
JURY PROBE OF FATAL WAUKEGAN FIRE Chicago Tribune Dec 23, 1953
ASK GRAND JURY PROBE OF FATAL WAUKEGAN FIRE
A Lake county coroner jury yesterday recommended a
grand jury investigation of the fire in a tenement at 538 Market st., Waukegan,
Dec. 6 in which five persons lost their lives, to determine if any criminal
negligence was involved.
It also recommended that Waukegan authorities prosecute
the owners, Floyd Booker and his wife, Lilly, and their son, William, who acted
as agent, for violation of building and health ordinances, and that the city
give more adequate inspection to similar structures.
The jury found that four of the deaths resulted
from asphyxiation and one from burns.
(29) FIRE COSTS FOUR LIVES IN ONE WAUKEGAN FAMILY
WAUKEGAN, Ill Somerset Daily American Newspaper Archives December 07, 1953 -
Page 2
FIRE
COSTS FOUR LIVES IN ONE WAUKEGAN FAMILY WAUKEGAN, Ill.,
Dec. 6 (UPI) A tenement fire in Waukegan's negro district
took five lives, at least four of them in one family. The victims, trapped in
tenement rooms of a two-story building were a 5-months-old Sally Magee, a
mother, Mrs. Ophelia Sanders, 36, and three children, Minnie, I1, James, 8, and
Bernice, 3. State’s Atty. Robert C Nelson said he was "shocked and
horrified" by the tragedy after an inspection of the scene showed that
tile building had been divided into a score of flats occupied by approximately
80 persons….
Nelson and coroner Robert Babcock said they planned to
cooperate in investigations to determine whether the fire resulted from
“negligence in enforcemtn of the city fire and building codes.”
Fire chief Norman Litz, who estimated damage at $5,000,
said the bodies were found after the fire, partly concealed by fallen plaster
and rubbish.
Frank Pope, 21, a passer-by, reported that Mrs Ruth
Jackson tossed her baby to him and then leaped from a second-story window. Pope
said he succeeded in partially breaking her fall. Mrs Jackson, who is pregnant,
was taken to a hospital. The baby caught by Pope was un-injured.
The Magee baby was found in a crib in a room next to that
occupied by the Sanders family. The baby’s parents, Mr and Mrs Raymond Magee
told police they were visiting neighbors when the fire broke out.
(30) 3 children
die in a Waukegan tenement fire Chicago Daily Tribune, Wed Feb 15, 1956, part
2, P10
3
children die in a Waukegan tenement fire
Firemen rescue five; mother escapes
Three children were burned to death yesterday in a
tenement building fire at 536 Market st Waukegan. Four other children and two
adults escaped.
The dead were Patricia Booker, 2; her brother Nelson Jr,
5 weeks and their niece, Deborah Booker, 3. Patricia and Nelson were children
of Nelson Booker, 46 and Deborah was his granddaughter.
Steps onto roof
Booker’s wife, Williestine, 20, mother of Nelson, escaped
the blazing second floor bedroom by knocking glass out of a window and stepping
onto the roof of an adjoining one story building.
In the downstairs apartment occupied by David Booker, a
brother of Nelson Sr, four children, 19 month to 4 years old, left in the care
of their sister, Odell, 18, were rescued by firemen after a passer-by broke
down the door.
Williestine Booker told fire Chief Norman Litz she was in
bed with her infant son when she was awakened by flames and smoke. She ran to
the window to summon aid, and when she turned around to return to the bed,
smoke and flames obscured her vision. She suffered from smoke inhalation and
arm and hand cuts and was taken to Victory Memorial hospital.
Blocked by flames
She said Patricia and Debeorah were in another bedroom
which she could not reach because of the flames.
Odell Booker was awakened by the fire but was unable to
open a locked door. A passerby ran to the door and forced it open just as
firemen arrived to take out the children.
The building is occupied by 20 persons in the families of
Nelson and David Booker. Several were at work or in school at the time of the
fire.
Blames Oil Heater
Chief Litz said the fire apparently was caused by a
faulty oil heater in the upstairs bedroom occupied by Mrs Booker. He estimated
the damage at $7,500 to the building and $5.000 to the contents.
Next door, at 538 Market st, five persons were killed in
a fire in a basement apartment Dec 6, 1953.
(31) Chicago Fire History website
In
1958, the Nitro Chemical Plant located at 740 Market Street was gutted by fire.
Waukegan firemen fought the fire in brutally cold conditions. It took almost 11
hours to gain control of the stubborn fire.
(32) Spectacular blaze guts tannery
building, Waukegan News-Sun November 15,
1973.
Spectacular
blaze guts tannery building,
A spectacular fire which sent huge waves of heavy black
smoke drifting over the northern half of Waukegan engulfed at least three
floors of the former Griess-Pfleger Tanning co. building late this morning.
Firemen failed to contain the blaze in the third and
fourth floors where it apparently started.
Firemen at the scene said the blaze spread rapidly as the
result of lacquer dust and old timbers in the five-story building which had
been recently purchased by Commonwealth Edison co.
Police said there were no indications that there was
anyone in the building when the fire broke out, but ambulances were standing
by. Waukegan firemen called for mutual aid from all neighboring departments.
A reporter at the scene said firemen were trying
desperately to keep the flames from penetrating downward into the first and second floors where machinery with fuel
tanks still intact was being stored pending disposal by the new owners of the
building.
The tannery, a lakefront landmark since 1918 and one of
the oldest industries in Waukegan once employed nearly 1,000 workers, but was
closed in July when shortages of raw materials, foreign competition and
anti-pollution regulations were cited by Donald Stephens, company president,
for the decision to shut down.
Firemen at the scene said the building’s sprinkler system
had been shut down and Commonwealth Edison was taking bids on demolition of the
structure, which was scheduled to begin next week.
Spectators said they could hear several small explosions
inside the building as the flames soured hundreds of feet into the air. Firemen
said the explosions were from fuel tanks and cans of lacquer.
Waukegan Director of Public Safety Edward Pavelick, asked
by reporters if he had decided to let the building burn, said “we don’t have
much choice. It’s already consumed most of the eastern half of the building.”
At 11:45 am, firemen were ordered to move the snorkel
truck back from the building, as officials apparently feared its imminent collapse.
(33) Workman’s torch sparked tannery fire,
Waukegan News-Sun
Workman’s
torch sparked tannery fire
Fire which destroyed nearly three floors of
the old Griess-Pfleger Tanning Co building on Waukegan’s lakefront Friday
morning was touched off by a workman’s torch, an investigation has shown.
Barnet Davis, district manager for
Commonwealth Edison, which owns the building said Friday the worker, one of six
in the building when the fire broke out, put an acetylene torch to a vent stack
on the south end of the third floor in the old lacquer paint spraying area and
the fume ignited.
The blaze, which sent huge waves of heavy
black smoke drifting ovwer the norther half of the city, virtually gutted the
entire third, fourth and fifth floors, except for about a quarter of each floor
on the building’s north side, which was saved by an old fire wall.
According to Davis, Edison purchased the
building recently, but had leased it to its original owners, the Beggs and Cobb
Corp. of Boston.
That firm had a company removing machines and
other equipment from the edifice.
No one was injured or hurt in the spectacular
fire as workmen scampered from the inferno. No damage estimates were available,
though Davis said the only cash loss would be for the equipment, not owned by
the power company which was still ion place and lost.
The fire might be a net credit to Edison,”
Davis told the News-Sun, although we don’t know if demolition crews charge more
or less for burned buildings.”
The buildings were to be razed beginning Dec
1, he said.
Waukegan firemen called for mutual aid from
all neighboring departments to quell the blaze. No other buildings in the area
were touched by flames.
Small explosions from fuel tanks and cans of
lacquer were heard by spectators at the scene, as flames soured hunfdreds of
feet into the air.
Firemen said the blaze spread rapidly as a
result of lacquer dust and old timbers in the five-story building. They worked desperately
to save the first and second floors where machinery with fuel tanks intact were
being stored, pending disposal of the building.
The tannery, a lakefront landmark since 1918
and one of the oldest industries in the city, once employing nearly 1,000
workers, closed in July, when shortages of raw materials, foreign completion
and anti-pollution regulations forced out of business.
(34) 3 Warehouses
Destroyed By Fire Chicago Tribune June 18, 1991
3 Warehouses Destroyed By Fire
Waukegan Inspector Calls Origin Of Blaze `Suspicious` By Robert Enstad
A warehouse fire on Waukegan`s lakefront that could be
seen from Chicago to Milwaukee Monday morning may have been caused by vagrants,
a fire official said.
The fire, which burned out of control for more than two
hours, leveled three abandoned warehouse buildings at Market Street and South
Avenue. The fire temporarily halted service on Metra`s north line. No injuries
were reported.
Daniel Young, a fire inspector for the Waukegan Fire Department,
said the blaze appeared to be ``of suspicious origin.``
``There have been as many as 30 vagrants living in the
(warehouse) buildings that we have had to roust out in the last few weeks,``
Young said.
He said the fire was burning in two places when
firefighters responded to an alarm around 8:45 a.m. Monday. The fire started in
a one-story building on the north end of the old Waukegan Storage and Warehouse
Co. property and eventually spread to the three- and four-story buildings
further south.
Most of the walls of the buildings collapsed, and the
remains smoldered for much of the afternoon. The fire fed on wooden rafters and
floors in the brick buildings.
Waukegan Mayor Haig Paravonian said it was the biggest
fire to hit Waukegan in recent years.
The warehouse buildings were owned most recently by two
partners, Allan Jacobs and Paul Kamschulte. The three buildings were built
around the turn of the century.
Kamschulte said the buildings had always been used for
warehousing, but had been vacant and boarded up for several years. The property
was for sale, they said.
Young said vagrants and homeless people had ripped out
many of the security boards. Many were sleeping in the buildings and some were
stripping the property of copper and other salvageable metals, he said.
``They sold the copper for food money,`` he said.
Dense black smoke from the fire was reportedly seen from
as far away as the Chicago Loop, O`Hare International Airport and in downtown
Milwaukee. At times, flames from the fire shot nearly a hundred feet into the
air and sent ashes and debris falling over an area of several blocks in
Waukegan.
Waukegan firefighters were assisted by firefighters from
North Chicago, Zion and Gurnee.
Young said train service on the Metra line from Chicago
to Kenosha was halted during the height of the fire because intense heat and
smoke spread over the tracks.
Paravonian said the warehouse building was slated for
razing as part of lakefront redevelopment in Waukegan and North Chicago.
However, those developments have been stymied by environmental problems and a
lack of funding, he said.
(35) Diamond has only horsed that unhitches
itself Lake County Independent and Waukegan Weekly Sun, Oct 5, 1906, P3
Diamond
has only horsed that unhitches itself
while Abe Diamond was driving across the Chicago &
Northwestern tracks at Madison street, east side, this morning, his horse
became frightened at a passing engine and turned completely around in harness,
unhitching himself with the exception of one tug.
The junk dealer now claims possession of the champion
trick horse of Lake County.
(36) Make junk profitable, they’ll get rid of it The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, Wed
April 1, 1970, P 22
Make
junk profitable, they’ll get rid of it
“Cars, cars, cars. Each of these piles of iron started
out as someone’s dream. But like many dreams, they have failed, and now are
nightmares—Burt Diamond, discoverer of the unburnt auto body bundle
Washington (UPI)—whenever something gets fouled up,
somebody decides to have a meeting about it in Washington. So now we have the
first National conference on the abandoned automobile.
The conference was put on by the institute of scrap iron
and steel, Inc, which speaks for the people who make their living from metal
junk. The purpose was to talk about the rising tide of derelict cars littering
America’s streets and countryside.
Burt Diamond, a dapper and cheerful fellow from Waukegan
Illinois was there because he has discovered “the unburnt auto body bundle.”
Burt runs the Diamond scrap yards and, with help from the
Waukegan city father and the Inland steel co, he is busy scourging his town of
abandoned automobiles.
“Every time a car is born, another car dies,” Burt says.
“It seems a car dies a little every day.”
The several hundred of his colleagues and assorted state,
local and federal officials were interested in how they could respond to
President Nixon’s demand to get cracking on the disposal of the 8 million to 20
million old cars cluttering the landscape.
The number of abandoned cars is increasing by an
estimated 1 million each year.
The scrap men say the nation is in danger of being
overwhelmed by rusting auto hulks because, since 1956, they have fallen on a
hard time. The big steel mills put in new equipment that didn’t demand as much scrap
and thereby drove prices down.
When the mills did want junked cars, the scrap could not
contain seats, tires and other nominal parts that didn’t make steel.
That drove labor costs up add left them with another
headache: one operator said that he has 10 acres of old tires and auto seats
right now.
Diamond let Waukegan use part of his junkyard as a pound
for abandoned cars, and when they went unclaimed Burt stripped off a few parts
and popped them into his big shredder and baler. His edge was that Inland steel
did not demand he burn away all of the non-usable materials in the cars before
he scrapped them.
The result was the “unburnt auto body bundle.” Reminding
that “You can’t spend 6 cents to make a nickel,” Burt offered it as one way
that scrap men can make ends meet. (The institute said that between 1954 and
1965, it cost $51 to get $56 worth of scrap out of a junked car.)
Burt suggested it was time for the other mills to follow
Inland steel’s lead.
Hollis Dole, an assistant secretary of the interior, said
the Bureau of mines has developed an incinerator that can burn up to 50 cars in
eight hours, costs only 22,000 to manufacture and doesn’t violate clean air
standards.
Dole said economic studies show the processor could get a
return of 20 per cent on his investment. He said Bureau of Mines chemists are
working on methods to extract oil and gas from old tires.
(37) Burton "Burt" Diamond Burial: Am Echod Cemetery Waukegan
Lake County Illinois, USA
Burton "Burt" Diamond ,
68, a Waukegan businessman, former alderman, civic leader, boater and a
champion of Waukegan lakefront development who retired to Yuma, Ariz., two
years ago, died Friday in a Phoenix hospital.
The cause of Diamond 's death is not definitely known yet, a family member said.
He was active until January, when he had emergency surgery, and had been hospitalized since then, she said.
Diamond operated Diamond Scrapyards on the Waukegan lakefront, was president of the Waukegan Grade School Board and member of the Waukegan Zoning Board of Appeals in the 1960s, served two terms as a Republican alderman on the Waukegan City Council in the 1970s and was a member of the Waukegan Port District Board in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ben Diamond Park on Waukegan's northwest side, named for Diamond 's father, is on land donated by the Diamonds .
Diamond was known by friends as man of integrity, strong opinions and a passion for his convictions and the city of Waukegan.
Political allies and foes knew him as an outspoken, sometimes feisty, associate.
"His heart was always in Waukegan," said Jack Blumberg, a Waukegan businessman who grew up with Diamond .
"He was a good, civic-minded guy," said Waukegan Mayor Bill Durkin, who was once beaten by Diamond in an aldermanic election.
As an alderman, port district commissioner, boater and lakefront property owner, Diamond crusaded for the redevelopment of the Waukegan Harbor area. "To develop Waukegan, start at the mouth of the harbor and go west," he once wrote.
His vision was partly fulfilled with the opening of the 1,000-slip South Harbor Marina in the mid-1980s.
Diamond Scrapyards, founded in 1892 in the area of Ash and Franklin streets by Diamond 's Russian immigrant grandfather, Abraham Diamond , was one of Lake County's oldest businesses.
Four generations of the Diamond family worked in the recycling operation.
Diamond was proud of the tradition and his family's more than century-long involvement in Waukegan.
"We're really a factory without a roof," he once told a News Sun reporter.
"We take materials and create a product needed by the factories of the world."
The lakefront scrap operation was closed after Diamond 's main warehouse, built over the Waukegan River, collapsed into the river during a 1993 flood.
Diamond attended Waukegan public schools and is a graduate of Roosevelt University, Chicago.
He was long active in his synagogue, Temple Am Echod. He was building chairman for the temple's new building at 1500 Sunset Ave. in Waukegan in the 1960s. He received the state of Israel's Prime Minister's Medal, the first awarded in Illinois, in 1973.
"Burt was a extremely warm-hearted," Blumberg said.
"He always wanted to do what was right ... When someone got in trouble, he was the first to say, `What do you need? What can we do for you?'"
Diamond is survived by his wife, Marlene Diamond , son Ben of Beach Park, daughter Lisabeth of Yuma, Ariz., three grandchildren and a sister, Shirley Fruchtman of Toledo, Ohio.
A memorial service is scheduled at 1 p.m. Friday, at Temple Am Echod in Waukegan.
The cause of Diamond 's death is not definitely known yet, a family member said.
He was active until January, when he had emergency surgery, and had been hospitalized since then, she said.
Diamond operated Diamond Scrapyards on the Waukegan lakefront, was president of the Waukegan Grade School Board and member of the Waukegan Zoning Board of Appeals in the 1960s, served two terms as a Republican alderman on the Waukegan City Council in the 1970s and was a member of the Waukegan Port District Board in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ben Diamond Park on Waukegan's northwest side, named for Diamond 's father, is on land donated by the Diamonds .
Diamond was known by friends as man of integrity, strong opinions and a passion for his convictions and the city of Waukegan.
Political allies and foes knew him as an outspoken, sometimes feisty, associate.
"His heart was always in Waukegan," said Jack Blumberg, a Waukegan businessman who grew up with Diamond .
"He was a good, civic-minded guy," said Waukegan Mayor Bill Durkin, who was once beaten by Diamond in an aldermanic election.
As an alderman, port district commissioner, boater and lakefront property owner, Diamond crusaded for the redevelopment of the Waukegan Harbor area. "To develop Waukegan, start at the mouth of the harbor and go west," he once wrote.
His vision was partly fulfilled with the opening of the 1,000-slip South Harbor Marina in the mid-1980s.
Diamond Scrapyards, founded in 1892 in the area of Ash and Franklin streets by Diamond 's Russian immigrant grandfather, Abraham Diamond , was one of Lake County's oldest businesses.
Four generations of the Diamond family worked in the recycling operation.
Diamond was proud of the tradition and his family's more than century-long involvement in Waukegan.
"We're really a factory without a roof," he once told a News Sun reporter.
"We take materials and create a product needed by the factories of the world."
The lakefront scrap operation was closed after Diamond 's main warehouse, built over the Waukegan River, collapsed into the river during a 1993 flood.
Diamond attended Waukegan public schools and is a graduate of Roosevelt University, Chicago.
He was long active in his synagogue, Temple Am Echod. He was building chairman for the temple's new building at 1500 Sunset Ave. in Waukegan in the 1960s. He received the state of Israel's Prime Minister's Medal, the first awarded in Illinois, in 1973.
"Burt was a extremely warm-hearted," Blumberg said.
"He always wanted to do what was right ... When someone got in trouble, he was the first to say, `What do you need? What can we do for you?'"
Diamond is survived by his wife, Marlene Diamond , son Ben of Beach Park, daughter Lisabeth of Yuma, Ariz., three grandchildren and a sister, Shirley Fruchtman of Toledo, Ohio.
A memorial service is scheduled at 1 p.m. Friday, at Temple Am Echod in Waukegan.
(38) The Pollution Patrol It`s A Dirty Job, But Somebody Has To Do It By Julie Bennett April 26, 1992
Chicago Tribune
The Pollution Patrol It`s A Dirty Job, But Somebody Has
To Do It
Below the bluff, along four miles of Lake
Michigan shore, the industrialists built factories to tan leather, draw wire
and produce energy from coal. Ships and then freight trains arrived
daily, bringing in the raw materials
needed for the factories and carrying away the finished products.
The pace was so intense that the
byproducts of these manufacturing processes, the chemicals used to strip the
hair from cow hides, the tars left over when coal is turned into coke and the
sludge that remains when iron is extracted from ore, were simply buried on
site, dumped into nearby wetlands or poured into streams that fed into the
lake.
Today many of the factories are gone,
and Waukegan is left with a second legacy: a lakefront that is an industrial
refuse wasteland.
Sharon Laughlin, coordinator for the
Waukegan Historical Society`s Haines Museum, says, ``We`ve been left with a
legacy of hazardous materials. We have miles of lakefront property which can
never be used again until we understand how these materials ... affect adjacent
property.``
For almost two years Laughlin has been
a member of the Waukegan Harbor Citizens Advisory Group (CAG), 28 volunteers
who are studying the city`s industrial history and its impact on the
environment.
CAG, which eventually will publish a
remedial action plan for the lakefront, is one of three forces focusing on
cleaning up the city`s lakeside. The second force involves the regulatory
agencies charged with ridding the country of hazardous waste: the U.S. and
Illinois Environmental Protection Agencies.
Since the 1970s, when Superfund
legislation enabled the federal EPA to go after the nation`s top polluters,
that agency has pushed two remaining Waukegan companies, Outboard Marine Corp.
(OMC) and Johns Manville, into cleaning up their contamination problems.
In an unusual alliance, the
environmental agencies and CAG are working together to keep a close watch on
other dangerous conditions in the area. Earlier this month, when the federal
EPA removed 200 drums, eight tanks and seven vats of potentially explosive
materials from the old Waukegan Paint and Lacquer Co., 764 Market St., they
gave CAG credit for pointing out the hazard. The third force is the City of
Waukegan. While the citizens` group and the EPAs are analyzing the sources of
the pollution to determine the extent of contamination, the city believes the
solution is selling the land first, then worrying about cleanups.
Since the mid-1980s local politicians
have seen lakefront development as the Phoenix from which a revitalized Waukegan
will rise. This winter the city began razing 17 old buildings in hopes of
making the land more attractive to developers.
Wes Dunski, Waukegan director of
economic development, acknowledged that some of the lakefront property has a
contamination problem but thinks it is not serious enough to impede
development. The city`s latest plan, according to Dunski, is to find a
developer for the southernmost 72 acres, on land that contains the site of the
Diamond Scrap Yard, a 100-year-old repository for rusting cars, appliances and
machinery, the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway Co. freight lines and several
abandoned factories.
The city, he says, has issued $35
million in redevelopment bonds and will use some of that money to help a
developer design a plan for the site that will solve the pollution problem by
positioning buildings away from the most contaminated areas. ``Once we decide
where the buildings will go,`` he says,
``then we`ll know where to start the
cleanup.``
Members of the Citizens Advisory Group
and representatives of the environmental agencies are skeptical of the city`s
approach. Greg Michaud, an environmental scientist with the state EPA, says he
can`t imagine that any developer ``would want to put up a building on an
environmental liability.``
Besides, the city`s track record on
environmental awareness has been under fire since 1986 when a highly touted
lakefront development plan would have placed multifamily housing atop the old
hides and chemicals of the former Greiss Pflieger Tannery site, 51 acres of
what is possibly the most polluted land in Lake County. That project failed
because of a lack of financing; the pollution problem was never mentioned.
``The city has its head stuck in the
sand over this,`` says a former city employee who asked not to be identified.
``The politicians seem to think the contamination will just go away. ... Sure,
development is important, but the first step is to find out what`s there.``
Members of CAG have taken on that
mission by studying old city and state records and private insurance company
maps to determine which factories were along the Waukegan lakefront decades ago
and what chemicals those operations commonly used. This role goes far beyond
the original scope of the group, formed by the Illinois EPA in 1990 to muster
citizen involvement in the Superfund cleanup of PCBs (polychlorinated
biphenyls) on and near Outboard Marine`s lakeside factory.
The agency invited stakeholders in the
cleanup-the city, the Port Authority, other area businesses and organizations, and
environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society-to form a
watchdog committee. (The city did send a representative for a while but has not
participated for more than a year.)
Stephen Lapish, CAG`s present chairman,
was asked to join the group because he was then commodore of the Waukegan Yacht
Club. ``When the group was formed, the Illinois EPA asked us to look at what
they called their area of concern, the Superfund site in Waukegan Harbor and
the adjacent pieces of property,`` Lapish says. ``But those of us who had lived
here all our lives knew that OMC was just a small portion of the problem. We
didn`t want that company to spend millions cleaning up their part of the
harbor, only to have the area repolluted next year by chemicals from other
factories and old industrial sites. We convinced the IEPA to blow up their area
of concern by 15 times. Now we`re looking at the whole Waukegan lakefront.``
So far CAG has identified 20 companies,
most of which are defunct, that could have contributed to soil and groundwater
pollution in the area.
``The tannery is a good example,``
Lapish says. Commonwealth Edison, which operates a waterfront generating
station on 203 acres to the east, bought the site of the Greiss-Pfleiger
Tannery in 1972, years after the company had stopped operating and the
buildings had burned.
``At first,`` Lapish says, ``Edison
tried to tell us that all the old materials had been removed from the property.
But when we climbed over the fence and started walking around, we knew we were
standing on piles and piles of old animal hides.``
Laughlin`s detective work helped the
group surmise what else could be buried there. ``This has become my pollution
guidebook,`` she says, holding up a blue-covered book titled ``Guidelines and
Methods for Conducting Property Transfer Site Histories.`` The manual was
written by Diane Mulville-Friel and Craig Colten of the Illinois State Museum
in Springfield.
According to Colten, a nationally known
expert in the history of industrial pollution, 50 to 90 percent of the
country`s old industrial sites are severely contaminated. Waukegan`s lakefront,
it appears, is no exception. Colten`s research shows leather tanneries that
operated in the early 1900s used arsenic, benzene, chromium and lead to strip
the fur off hides-substances on the federal list of hazardous chemicals.
As soon as Edison`s CAG representative
heard about possible contaminants, the utility erected a sturdy fence around
the property. ``We no longer have any plans to sell or use that property,``
says Ron Crawford, Edison district manager.
CAG also alerted the EPA agencies to
barrels and vats of dangerous chemicals left in a storage shed after the
Waukegan Paint and Lacquer factory burned in 1976. ``We had talked to enough
people to know that the materials stored there were highly flammable and
unstable,`` Lapish says.
One of those people was Jack Stewart, a
former Waukegan fire chief. Says Stewart: ``We knew that some of those barrels
contained nitrocellulose, a compound that is so dangerous that it has to be
shipped in an alcohol solution. When it dries out, it becomes a bomb.``
At CAG`s insistence, the federal EPA
put the shed on its emergency response list and spent $100,000 removing and
safely disposing of the chemicals this month. Within sight of the old paint
factory, across a stream called the Waukegan River, another cleanup began Feb.
1, but this time neither CAG nor EPA authorities were involved or notified.
There, city bulldozers are knocking
down remnants of nine industrial buildings and eight dilapidated houses that
occupy the 72-acre stretch the city has targeted for its next development plan.
Dunski explains that the cost of the razing is being shared by the Bank of
Waukegan, which foreclosed on the 11-acre site of the old Diamond Scrap Yard
and now owns that property, and the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co.,
which owns 20 to 24 acres.
Other owners of deserted buildings in
the area who cannot afford to contribute will have a city lien placed against
their property, Dunski says. The city bought the row of ramshackle houses
outright and evicted the tenants, he adds.
The leveling of the buildings and the
removal of the rubble, which included 4,320 tires from the scrap yard alone,
should make the land more attractive to developers ``who will soon be fighting
over it,`` Dunski predicts. To ensure that developers will come, the city is
spending an additional $31,000 with Tracy Cross and Associates, residential
marketing consultants from Northfield, for a marketing plan for the area and as
much as $125,000 for an environmental study. ``I think a hotel and conference
center would be terrific there,`` Dunski says, ``plus about 900 condo units,
which would sell for $200,000 to 250,000.``
Dunski`s enthusiasm is shared by Alden
Mose, president of the Landmark Corp., a Chicago real estate company that holds
the listing for 42 of the nearly cleared acres and is negotiating with owners
of the other 30 acres. He thinks the total half-mile of lakefront is worth at
least $13 million. ``A number of developers have expressed an interest in this
property, although we`re not doing a full-fledged marketing job yet,`` Mose
said.
One crucial piece of information is
Cross` analysis of the type of housing forms that will work on the site. ``This
project must be consumer driven,`` Cross says. ``It will take us at least
another month to determine what priced residential units will be viable
there.`` The other missing piece of information is, of course, the extent of
the contamination. ``I want to be comfortable telling people what they`re
getting into,`` Mose says.
Dunski, however, plays down the
lakefront pollution problems. ``Everyone got all excited about the Waukegan
Paint and Lacquer situation,`` he says,
``but, you know, grass was growing
around those drums and birds had been sitting on them for 20 years. As for the
Diamond Scrap Yard, there`s nothing to be afraid of in a junkyard full of
automobile parts. Sure, there`s some grease on the ground, but that can be
cleaned up. It`s no worse than your driveway, and it`s certainly not
life-threatening.``
Michaud of the state EPA disagrees.
``Salvage yards can have a variety of contaminants. One of the first Superfund
sites in the state of Illinois was a scrapyard in Rockford, where the U.S. EPA
found everything from battery acid to odd drums of chemicals to volatile
organics. We understand that the Bank of Waukegan has paid to have the soil
tested there but will not release the results.``
Fred Abdula, chairman of the board of
the Bank of Waukegan, acknowledges that his organization hired Roy F. Weston
Inc., a Vernon Hills environmental consulting company, to perform 100 soil
borings on the site of the proposed development but says, ``the report has not
been presented because property use has not been identified.`` He adds that
whatever pollution is there may not be a problem because the developer could
design structures that are above ground level, leaving only parking, blacktop
or grass resting on the contaminated soil.
This theory ignores the greatest threat
of soil contamination: that hazardous substances in the soil will leach into
the groundwater and threaten human life and safety by affecting the drinking
water supply. Further testing would be required to determine whether the
half-mile of property the city has slated for development rests on an aquifer
that drains into the lake.
(39) Old resident
dead Libertyville independent, Oct 28, 1910 p8
Old resident dead
J
George Stang aged 79 years and one of the oldest German settlers of Waukegan
and lake county died Monday at 4 of old age at his home at 502 Market street,
and the funeral was held Wednesday.
The
late Mr Stang was born in 1831 and came to the city at an early age. For many
years he was master baker for Henry Wachenfeld before the latter retired from
active life, but for the last seven years has been gatekeeper for the Chicago
& northwester road at south avenue.
He
enjoyed the respect of the entire community and was held in high esteem by all
who know him. He and his family were prominent in German-American affairs and
he will be much missed. His wife died years ago but his children survive.
The
survivors are Margaret, George, Leonard and Christ of this city; Mrs. F C
Martin of Chicago, Mrs. N J Grenten of Fox lake.
(40) John Count dies at Springfield Libertyville
independent Oct 10, 1918, p 6
John
Count dies at Springfield
The remains of John Count, a resident of Waukegan for
many years, arrived at Waukegan Sunday night from Springfield where death occurred
on Oct 4 of heart disease of which he had been suffering for some time. Mr.
Count was 59 years old. For years he held the position of chief watchman at the
old Corn Products Reefing co plant in Waukegan. For some time he held the
position of guard at the state house in Springfield.
(41) Final stage I & II report, Waukjegan Harbor
Remedial Action plan, Waukegan, Ill, Dec 1994
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and Citzens
Advisory Group, Waukegan, p 164-165
7.3.6 Diamond Scrap yards
Roy F Weston, Inc, a consultant for the Bank of Waukegan,
conducted soil sampling at the Diamond Scrap Yard in 1991. Shallow soils at
this site were found to contain detectable levels of inorganics, volatile
organic compounds (VOC), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbins (PAH), and
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). The impact to groundwater was not evaluated.
Asbestos was found in the buildings but most of it is considered nonfriable.
Asbestos in this condition is less likely to pose a health threat.
Of the inorganics, cadmium, lead, cyanide, copper and
zinc appeared in large amounts. VOCs include solvents and cleaning materials as
well as various chemicals found in petroleum products. Creosote (used for
treating wood), diesel fuel, fuel oil, asphalt and tire burning residues comprised
most of the PAHs. Near the boiler and metal shears, PCBs were found.
Diamond Salvage ceased operations by the close of 1993.
Much of the scrap and other debris was removed from the site by April, 1994.
The Bank of Waukegan holds the property title.
(42) Bostrom, C.-E.; Gerde, P.; Hanberg, A.; Jernstrom, B.;
Johansson, C.; Kyrklund, T.; Rannug, A.; Tornqvist, M.; Victorin, K.;
Westerholm, R. (2002). "Cancer risk assessment, indicators, and
guidelines for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the ambient air". Environmental Health Perspectives.
110 (Suppl 3): 451–488.
(43)
61 FR 30067 - Settlement Under Section 122(h) of the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act; In the Matter of
Waukegan Paint and Lacquer Company, Inc., Waukegan, IL Federal Register Volume 61, Issue 115 (June 13, 1996) AE 2.7: GS 4.107: AE 2.106: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and
Records Administration
AE 2.7: GS 4.107: AE 2.106: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and
Records Administration
Action Settlement of
CERCLA Section 107 Cost Recovery Matter.
Settlement of
CERCLA Section 107 Cost Recovery Matter.
Dates Comments on
this administrative settlement must be received by no later than July 15, 1996.
Comments on
this administrative settlement must be received by no later than July 15, 1996.
Summary EPA is
proposing to settle a cost recovery claim with certain potentially responsible
parties (PRPs) with regard to past costs at the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
Company, Inc. Site in Waukegan, Illinois. EPA is authorized under Section
122(h) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability
Act of 1980, as amended (``CERCLA'') to enter into this administrative
settlement. Response costs totalling $165,118 were incurred by EPA in
connection with an emergency removal action at the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
Site. On February 23, 1995, U.S. EPA sent the PRPs a demand for reimbursement
of the Agency's past costs. The Settling Parties have agreed to pay $94,000 to
settle EPA's claim for reimbursement of response costs related to the Site. EPA
is proposing to approve this administrative settlement because it reimburses
EPA, in part, for costs incurred during its response activities at this Site.
EPA is
proposing to settle a cost recovery claim with certain potentially responsible
parties (PRPs) with regard to past costs at the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
Company, Inc. Site in Waukegan, Illinois. EPA is authorized under Section
122(h) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability
Act of 1980, as amended (``CERCLA'') to enter into this administrative
settlement. Response costs totalling $165,118 were incurred by EPA in
connection with an emergency removal action at the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer
Site. On February 23, 1995, U.S. EPA sent the PRPs a demand for reimbursement
of the Agency's past costs. The Settling Parties have agreed to pay $94,000 to
settle EPA's claim for reimbursement of response costs related to the Site. EPA
is proposing to approve this administrative settlement because it reimburses
EPA, in part, for costs incurred during its response activities at this Site.
Agency Name ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
SUMMARY: EPA is proposing to settle a
cost recovery claim with certainpotentially responsible parties (PRPs) with
regard to past costs at the Waukegan Paint and Lacquer Company Inc. Site in
Waukegan, Illinois. EPA is authorized under Section 122(h) of the
Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended (‘‘CERCLA’’) to enter into
this administrative settlement.
Response costs totalling $165,118 were
incurred by EPA in connection with an emergency removal action at the Waukegan
Paint and Lacquer Site. On February 23, 1995, U.S. EPA sent the PRPs a demand
for reimbursement of the Agency’s past costs. The Settling
Parties have agreed to pay $94,000 to
settle EPA’s claim for reimbursement of response costs related to the Site. EPA
is proposing to approve this administrative settlement because it reimburses
EPA, in part, for costs incurred during its response activities at this Site.
(44) Analysis of
Brownfield Cleanup Alternatives (ABCA) Former Fansteel Property 801 S. Market
Street Waukegan, Illinois 60085 December 7, 2015 Prepared for: The City of
Waukegan 100 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. Waukegan, IL 60085
1.1 Site Location The subject property being analyzed for
brownfield alternatives is herein referred to as the Former Fansteel Property.
The address of the subject property is 801 S. Market Street Waukegan, Illinois
60085 (42°20’42.61”N,
87°49’42.52”W)
and consists of approximately 11 acres. The property is bounded to the west by
the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company and the former Waukegan Paint and
Lacquer Company property. Market Street and the Elgin Joliet and Eastern
(EJ&E) Railroad Company bound the property to the east. The subject
property is bounded by undeveloped land to the north and south. Former steel
manufacturing buildings and above-grade structures have been demolished and
removed from the property where the property is currently an undeveloped vacant
lot. 1.2 Previous Uses of the Site A long history of industrial use is documented
on the property dating back to the 1890s. Sanborn maps from 1890 and 1892 show
two large building structures on the subject property that housed the former
U.S. Sugar Refinery to the south and the U.S. Starch Works to the north. By
1912, the structures were labeled as a corn products refinery company. A tank
foundation was located on the east side of the north building structure from
the 1912 Sanborn map. There was a coal unloading tower near the northwest end
of the building structure and the southern portion of the building was used for
oil storage. By 1917, the structures have become the “Manufacturers Terminal
Co.” The 1949 revisions to the 1929 Sanborn map depict many of the buildings
that were formerly a part of the upper and lower plants had been demolished by
1949. The Vascoloy-Ramet Corporation (a subsidiary of Fansteel) is located in a
building in an area of the Main Building. Other occupants of the main building
include Quality Tool Works machine shop, a metal plates work, Shurit Products, a
manufacturer of automotive repair parts, Pfanstiehl Chemical Company, and
Abbott Laboratory. The 1969 Sanborn shows that the Vascoloy-Ramet Corporation
continued to operate in the Main Building, with large additions to the south
end of the building constructed in 1965. A graphite building was also built on
the property, which was used for storage and metals reclamation operations. The
Storage Building was labeled as being a loft and the Ceramics Building housed a
machine shop. The Vascoloy-Ramet Corporation was formed in 1933 as a joint
venture between Fansteel and the Vanadium Alloys Steel Company. Vascoloy-Ramet
began its operations in Waukegan in 1943. The Vascoloy-Ramet Corporation later
dissolved and reorganized as the VR/Wesson Division of Fansteel. The Fansteel
VR/Wesson plant discontinued operations in April 1987.
1.3 Past Site Assessment Findings
Substantial site investigation work has been completed at
the property while actively enrolled in the Illinois EPA (IEPA) Site
Remediation Program (SRP) from 2004 thru 2007. Soil samples were collected in
the 0 to 3 foot surface soil horizon and above the interface of the
groundwater/vadose zone, visibly stained soil intervals, if present, and/or at
the depth with the highest organic vapor field reading. A second round of
discrete surface soil sampling was conducted on September 15, 2005, as
requested by IEPA during the May 13, 2005 meeting. Constituents measured in
discrete soil samples above the Tier 1 direct contact Soil Remedial Objectives
(SRO) were trichloroethene, carcinogenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons
(CPAHs), PCBs, aldrin, arsenic, antimony, chromium, copper, lead, and mercury.
Constituents measured in soil above Tier 1 migration to groundwater SROs
included 1,1,1-trichloroethane, methylene chloride, trichloroethene, vinyl
chloride, CPAHs, carbazole, lindane arsenic, antimony, chromium, cyanide, lead,
mercury, and selenium. Ten monitoring wells were installed November 2004.
Monitoring wells were positioned throughout the site at the perimeter boundary
and at former operation areas.
A Remedial Action Plan was approved on February 7, 2008
and began to be implement in part during 2008 through 2009. Environmental work
stopped at the property in 2009 due to lack of continued funding. The
components of the remedial action plan that were completed included:
Contaminant “source area” soil excavation and
stockpiling on-site for proposed off-site landfill disposal (off-site landfill
transport and disposal was not completed).
Placement, grading, and compaction of a 3-4 ft. clean
clay soil layer across the property to meet the requirements of an Engineered
Barrier in 35 IAC Part 742.1100.
Post-excavation confirmation sampling and analysis of
contaminant source area bottom and sidewall soils.
Soil sampling and analysis of imported clean soil
utilized for the construction of the engineered barrier layer.
The City of Waukegan purchased the site in December of
2014 and plans to continue to transform this land into usable space as part of
the City’s Redevelopment Master Plan.
(45) Waukegan seeks federal environmental grants for
lakefront development Dan Moran, News-Sun Jan 1, 2016
Saying that state environmental grants have been held up
by Springfield's budget stalemate, Waukegan officials have turned to the
federal government in seeking funds for the final stage of a brownfield cleanup
on the south lakefront.
Gary Deigan, a Lake Bluff-based environmental
consultant who has been working with Waukegan on efforts to prepare the former
Fansteel machine-tool plant site for residential redevelopment, said the city
filed an application on Dec. 18 for $200,000 in remediation funds, or about
half of what is needed. The remaining half would be provided by a group of
investors who previously worked to clean up the land.
"You usually hear back from the (Environmental
Protection Agency) in the first quarter or second quarter following your
application, so I would anticipate we'll know by late spring or early
summer," Deigan said this week, guessing that removal of remaining
contaminated soil could be complete by the end of 2016 if the funds are
awarded.
The 11-acre site in question sits at 801 S. Market St.
and extends to the North Chicago border. Ownership of the parcel was
transferred to the city in December 2014 from Southlake Investments, a private
group that had spent a reported $1.2 million on cleaning up the soil from 2004
through 2009, when the collapse of the housing market halted plans to redevelop
the property with a mix of condominiums, single-family homes and retail space.
According to a report filed by Diegan with the city,
industrial use of the land dates to the 1890s, with operations that included
the U.S. Sugar and U.S. Starch Works refineries around the turn of the century.
By the 1930s and '40s, Fansteel and the Vanadium Alloys Steel Co. established a
metal-fabricating operation that remained active until what was known as the
Fansteel VR/Wesson plant closed in early 1987.
Both Deigan's report and published findings by the EPA
state that soil contamination detected in the mid-2000s included PCBs, arsenic,
copper, lead and mercury. Deigan said Southlake's cleanup of the site ended
with a stockpile of contaminated soil on the parcel that will be hauled to the
Zion Landfill if and when the final funds are in hand.
Market Street dead-ends near an 11-acre tract on
Waukegan's south lakefront that is being targeted for $200,000 in brownfield
cleanup funds through a grant program by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. (Dan Moran / Lake County News-Sun)
At the Dec. 7 City Council meeting, Mayor Wayne Motley
said the private developer would cover any remaining funds needed for the
cleanup once a grant is secured. He added that the city took ownership of the
land primarily to serve as an applicant for EPA dollars and the previous owner
"could possibly buy that (land) back from us" following the cleanup.
"We applied for a state grant, but due to the budget
crisis, we can't get that grant," Motley told the council. "(This)
money will not be paid for by the taxpayers. It will be paid for by a private
individual, so the city is out no funds for this cleanup."
Deigan's report states that "the intended reuse plan
for the subject property, as described in the 2003 Waukegan Master Plan, is to
turn the former industrial property into residential neighborhoods. Residential
development includes condominiums, row homes, single family homes, open space,
and a parking structure."
Plans presented to the city in 2009 by Southlake called
for more than 222 residential units and 15,000 square feet of retail space on a
22-acre parcel that included both the old Fansteel property and the vacant Lake
County Foundry site on the north. The project was estimated at that time to
cost between $87 million and $110 million.
1. Has all available relevant/significant information on known and
reasonably suspected releases to the groundwater media, subject to RCRA
Corrective Action (e.g., from Solid Waste Management Units (SWMU), Regulated
Units (RU), and Areas of Concern (AOC)), been considered in this EI
determination? X If yes – check here and continue with #2 below. __ If no –
re-evaluate existing data, or __ If data are not available skip to #8 and enter
―IN‖ (more information needed) status code.
BACKGROUND Definition of Environmental
Indicators (for the RCRA Corrective Action) Environmental Indicators (EI) are
measures being used by the RCRA Corrective Action program to go beyond
programmatic activity measures (e.g., reports received and approved, etc.) to
track changes in the quality of the environment. The two EI developed to-date
indicate the quality of the environment in relation to current human exposures
to contamination and the migration of contaminated groundwater. An EI for
non-human (ecological) receptors is intended to be developed in the future.
Definition of “Migration of Contaminated Groundwater Under Control” EI A
positive ―Migration of Contaminated Groundwater Under Control‖ EI determination
(―YE‖ status code) indicates that the migration of ―contaminated‖ groundwater
has stabilized, and that monitoring will be conducted to confirm that
contaminated groundwater remains within the original ―area of contaminated
groundwater‖ (for all groundwater ―contamination‖ subject to RCRA corrective
action at or from the identified facility (i.e., site-wide)). Relationship of
EI to Final Remedies While Final remedies remain the long-term objective of the
RCRA Corrective Action program the EI are near-term objectives which are
currently being used as Program measures for the Government Performance and
Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). The ―Migration of Contaminated Groundwater Under
Control‖ EI pertains ONLY to the physical migration (i.e., further spread) of
contaminated groundwater and contaminants within groundwater (e.g., non-aqueous
phase liquids or NAPLs). Achieving this EI does not substitute for achieving
other stabilization or final remedy requirements and expectations associated
with sources of contamination and the need to restore, where practicable,
contaminated groundwater to be suitable for its designated current and future
uses. Duration/Applicability of EI Documentation EI Determinations status codes
should remain in RCRIS national database ONLY as long as they remain true
(i.e., RCRIS status codes must be changed when the regulatory authorities
become aware of contrary information). Migration of Contaminated Groundwater
Under Control Environmental Indicator (EI) RCRIS Code (CA750) Page 2 .
2. Is groundwater known or reasonably suspected to be “contaminated”1 above
appropriately protective ―levels‖ (i.e., applicable promulgated standards, as
well as other appropriate standards, guidelines, guidance, or criteria) from
releases subject to RCRA Corrective Action, anywhere at, or from, the facility?
X If yes – continue after identifying key contaminants, citing appropriate
―levels,‖ and referencing supporting documentation. ______ If no - skip to #8
and enter ―YE‖ status code, after citing appropriate ―levels,‖ and referencing
supporting documentation to demonstrate that groundwater is not ―contaminated.‖
______If unknown - skip to #8 and enter an ―IN‖ status code.
Rationale: Facility Background
and Investigations Lakeshore Foundry (LSF) is a 0.77 acre site located in
Waukegan, Illinois on a bluff along the shoreline of Lake Michigan,
approximately 40 miles north of Chicago (Figure 1).
Established in 1900, the
foundry produced nonferrous alloys, including brass, bronze, and aluminum
castings. Also, LSF historically manufactured red brass and tin bronze, which
may have contained lead. In 2006, the U.S. EPA and Lakeshore Foundry signed an
Administrative Order on Consent to address contamination resulting from over
100 years of foundry operations. The site investigation included sampling and
analysis of soil, groundwater, and sediments from the site and an adjacent
beach area on Lake Michigan. Samples were also analyzed for volatile organic
contaminants (VOCs) and semi-volatile organic contaminants (SVOCs), which were
shown not to be an issue at the site. To address the source of lead, the main
site contaminant, LSF implemented Interim Measures as required by the
Administrative Order to excavate lead-contaminated soils. Also, seven rounds of
groundwater sampling were conducted. There are five groundwater monitoring
wells on site (see Figure 1). Groundwater was encountered at around 10 feet
below ground surface (bgs). Table 1 (below) lists the maximum concentration of
each contaminant found in groundwater from June 2008 through January 2012.
Analytical results from these groundwater sampling events were compared to
Illinois EPA (IEPA) Class I and Class II groundwater standards (35 IAC Part
620) and to U.S. EPA conservative drinking water standards or ―maximum
contaminant levels‖ (MCLs), although groundwater in this area is not used as a
drinking water source. VOCs were not detected at levels above the screening
criteria. As shown in Table 1, groundwater at the site was contaminated with
metals at concentrations that exceeded applicable groundwater criteria for
total metals. MW-02 is closer to the source area that was addressed by the
interim measure soil excavation. Samples from MW-02 typically have shown higher
concentrations of metals, including lead and copper. Table 2 shows dissolved
metals data, which are compared to the U.S. EPA Maximum Contaminant Levels for
drinking water. There are no on-site or nearby groundwater users. The City of
Waukegan’s groundwater ordinance prohibits installation and use of private
water supply wells within the South Lakefront Development area, which includes the
LSF property. In July 2007, LSF conducted an Interim Measures Investigation to
evaluate the levels of total lead, to determine the extent of lead-contaminated
soil above the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) regulatory
limit of 5 mg/L, and to develop an interim measures removal and soil treatment
plan for the facility. In January 2008, LSF completed interim measures to
control the source of the contamination. Over 500 tons of lead-impacted soils
were excavated, treated, and disposed of at an off-site landfill. Confirmation
samples were Migration of Contaminated Groundwater Under Control Environmental
Indicator (EI) RCRIS Code (CA750) Page 3 . analyzed for Appendix IX metals. One
additional small isolated area of elevated TCLP lead remained, which was
removed in July and August 2008. To evaluate potential human health exposures,
LSF sampled sediment at the adjacent Lake Michigan beachfront area. Soil was
sampled on the small beaches north and south of the property. The sediments and
beach soil sample results did not exceed IEPA Tier 1 standards.
(47) Kenosha News Newspaper Archives Thursday,
November 09, 1967 - Page 26
Three Lake County. Ill., industries admitted Wednesday
they are polluting Lake Michigan. The admissions came in voluntary testimony
before the newly formed Northern Illinois Water Resources and Conservation
commission. Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago; Outboard Marine Corp.,
Waukegan, and American Steel and Wire Co., a division of United States Steel
Corp., Waukegan, said they planned to meet water quality criteria by the end of
next year. Abbott Labs admitted dumping a half-million gallons of processed
waste which contains nitrates and phosphates into the lake daily. The firm uses
20 million gallons of lake water a day and is spending $250,000 to eliminate
the pollution. Outboard Marine uses six million gallons daily, mostly for
cooling purposes. But acids are getting into the water discharged back into the
lake. American Steel and Wire’s discharged water contains sulphuric acid. Four
other firms denied polluting the lake. These were Midland Industrial Finishes
Co., Griess-Pfleger Tanning Co., Johns-Manville Products Corp., and
Commonwealth Edison Co.
WAUKEGAN, Ill., Feb. 20— For seven years since high concentrations of PCB's were found in its inner
harbor on Lake Michigan, Waukegan has been frustrated by legal and scientific
wrangling over the cleanup of the toxic wastes.
Now Mayor William Morris and others are hoping that the Congressional
inquiry into the Environmental Protection Agency's handling of the Federal
cleanup fund will finally get the harbor free of the contamination.
''We want them to remove it or stop giving us a black eye,'' the Mayor
said. If the PCB's posed as serious a health threat to the community as the
Government says they do, the Government should come up with a plan to remove
them, he said.
Although the PCB's were declared an imminent danger to the environment by
state and Federal environmental officials, the dispute has been going on for so
long that fishermen and charter services disregard the signs warning of
contamination. PCB's Discovered in 1971
At least three plans have been put forward over the last five years to
remove the PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used as an
insulator in electrical transformers and now suspected of causing cancer in
laboratory animals.
PCB contamination in Lake Michigan was first discovered in 1971. It was not
until 1975 that Federal and state environmental surveys traced a major part of
the contamination to the Outboard Marine Corporation in Waukegan Harbor. The
company, the nation's largest manufacturer of outboard motors, was founded in
the city in 1935 and from the late 1950's to the early 70's it used PCB
hydraulic fluids in manufacturing.
The Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1981 that the company was
''one of the major, if not the major source'' of PCB contamination, and had
dumped as much as 1.7 million pounds of PCB's into the northernmost section of
the harbor or into a ditch and slender channel running directly to the lake.
As a result, water in parts of the harbor contains 500 to 1,000 times the
recommended Federal standard of PCB's and waters heading out into the open lake
contain 50 times the federally recommended level, the agency said. Company
Questions Threat
The company has maintained that it was the Federal Government's
responsibility to clean up about 275,000 pounds of PCB sediment remaining in a
harbor slip and an unknown amount in the north ditch and channel.
''If E.P.A. thinks there is a problem and imminent danger they should come
up with an environmentally sound, permanent remedy,'' said Hugh Thomas,
associate general counsel and secretary of Outboard Marine. Mr. Thomas said
scientific data on the immediate dangers of PCB contamination of the sediment
were inconclusive, and suggested that the pollution is not the serious problem
that the Federal Government portrays it to be.
In 1978 Outboard Marine sued the E.P.A. to come up with a plan. Shortly
afterward the Federal and state governments sued both the company and its PCB
supplier, the Monsanto Company of St. Louis, for the costs of the cleanup.
Monsanto has since been dropped from the Federal action. A 'Symbolic Victory'
Roger L. Harrison, the environmental administrator of Waukegan, said the
E.P.A. tried to begin a cleanup in 1979 before final testing on the company's
property was completed. Federal officials attempted to divert the contaminated
north ditch from the lake but found that the land around it was so contaminated
that it amounted to ''an unlicensed and unsecure PCB landfill.'' Disturbing the
ditch posed new hazards for the harbor and lake and the plan was dropped, Mr.
Harrison said.
In 1981 the Lake Michigan Federation, an environmental group, became
angered at the slow pace of the cleanup. Laurence Kamer, the assistant director
of the federation, and other citizens groups lobbied successfully for a special
bill from Congress appropriating $1.5 million to begin the cleanup. Although
the total cleanup cost had been estimated at $40 million, Mr. Kamer said, ''it
was symbolic in that Congress was saying that Waukegan Harbor was a priority.''
However, Robert Hartian, a regional E.P.A. spokesman, said the outboard
company refused to provide land for a temporary holding and filtration area for
the sediment. The environmental agency now has no dump sites licensed to handle
the PCB concentrations found in Waukegan harbor nor a permanent disposal method
that has been thoroughly tested, he said.
Mr. Hartian said the temporary proposal was dropped when President Carter
signed the law that was to provide up to $1.6 billion for toxic waste cleanups.
However, the law required that state governments provide 10 percent of the
cost of the cleanup, and at the time Gov. James Thompson and his staff
concluded that because of budget constraints the money could not be obtained
from the Legislature.
But now Mayor Morris and others are hoping that the inquiry into the
E.P.A.'s handling of the clean-up fund will finally get the harbor free of
PCB's. Mr. Thomas of Outboard Marine said the uproar in Washington was bound to
have some impact.
(49)
EPA Declares “World’s Largest PCB Mess” At Waukegan Harbor Clean By Mike KrauserAugust 5, 2014 at 1:40 pm
CHICAGO (CBS) — After nearly 30 years of legal wrangling and cleanup efforts, one of the
most polluted sites on Lake Michigan has been declared safe.
WBBM
Newsradio’s Mike Krauser reports U.S. Senators Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin joined
Gov. Pat Quinn, other elected officials, activists, and U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Regional Administrator Susan Hedman to celebrate the $150
million cleanup of a Superfund site in Waukegan Harbor.
“Waukegan
Harbor was designated an Area of Concern primarily due to of PCB contamination
from Outboard Marine Corporation,” Hedman said.
Cameron Davis,
who helped form the Waukegan Harbor Citizens’ Advisory Group in the 1990s, has
since become a senior advisor at the EPA.
“Waukegan
Harbor was once called ‘The World’s Worst PCB Mess,’” he said.
Outboard Marine
used PCBs, a toxic chemical in hydraulic fluids, at a boat motor manufacturing
plant at the harbor. The company went bankrupt in 2000, and abandoned the plant
in 2002.
The company
first cleaned up the harbor in 1992 by dredging contaminated sediment, but
after the plant was abandoned, the EPA determined PCB levels were still high,
and more dredging was needed.
Costs of the
cleanup fell almost entirely on taxpayers, Durbin said.
“There’s a
lesson here, isn’t there? In terms of corporate conduct, whether they used this
harbor as a dump out of ignorance, or negligence, or malice, whatever,” he
said. “We’ve got to make sure that there’s responsible corporate conduct.”
Outboard paid
for only 2 percent of the $150 million cleanup cost.
Kirk predicted
huge benefits for Waukegan, beyond cleaning up pollution.
“Take a
polluted harbor, and make it clean, and make the property values skyrocket,” he
said.
Waukegan Mayor
Wayne Motley said it’s a new beginning, and opens the door to new development
along the lakeshore.
Waukegan
Hopes Plant Closing Ends Pcb Stigma
City Seeks New Uses For Omc Facility Area
Outboard Marine Corp. is famous
for building boat motors and for contaminating Waukegan Harbor with
toxic PCBs--leaving the city of Waukegan with the image of a polluted town.
That image haunts Waukegan even today and explains the
mixed reactions that greeted OMC's announcement last week that it is
closing manufacturing facilities that spilled a million pounds of
toxic chemicals and helped make Waukegan Harbor a national Superfund site.
"I'm taken aback by it," Waukegan Ald. Ray
Vukovich (4th) said Friday, adding that "I do see this as a mixed
blessing."
Only a week ago, he said, the city approved plans to seek
financing to redevelop lakefront industrial property in an area that includes
the 110-acre OMC complex on Waukegan Harbor.
"A lot of things could happen there," he said.
"Do we keep it a commercial site or clean it up and build high-rise
condominiums overlooking a golf course and the beach? We have serious issues to
consider."
Waukegan Mayor Bill Durkin holds no grudges against the
plant that attracted national attention as OMC fought the federal government,
then spent $27 million on a PCB cleanup that ended in 1993 after decades of
controversy.
"We're just sorry we're losing 431 jobs, plus about
50 or 60 supervisors," said the mayor. "Waukegan is so diversified,
as far as jobs go, our unemployment is like 3 percent or lower. I don't think
the people laid off are going to have too hard a time finding employment around
here."
Because of the PCB pollution, Waukegan remains one of 43
areas of concern on the Great Lakes that are tainted with toxic chemicals.
PCBs--polychlorinated biphenyls--potentially cause cancer.
From 1961 to about 1972, OMC used a hydraulic fluid
containing PCBs in its die-casting works. Spilled hydraulic fluids washed down
floor drains and were flushed into Waukegan Harbor or onto OMC property.
OMC and Waukegan Harbor were designated a Superfund site
in 1981. The cleanup entailed dredging up tons of contaminated harbor muck and
sediment and placing it in three enclosed containment areas that OMC expects to
maintain and monitor for the next 25 years.
Outboard Marine traces its presence in Waukegan to 1925.
The company announced Thursday that it was closing manufacturing facilities in
Waukegan and Milwaukee in a move to improve efficiency.
The company will keep its headquarters in Waukegan.
Past pollution in Waukegan played no role in the decision
to close the manufacturing plant, said Marlena Cannon, company spokeswoman.
"That was years ago, all that is forgotten,"
said Cannon.
Earlier this month, however, Don Wadleigh, operators
manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Chicago district, said traces of
PCBs and other pollution remaining in Waukegan Harbor are among the obstacles
that have prevented the corps from dredging the harbor for navigation since
1969, the last time the harbor was dredged.
Dredging the harbor is seen as a major step to attracting
industry to the area, both to get rid of the remaining pollution and to deepen
the harbor so big ships can sail in fully loaded with cargo.
Waukegan still suffers from its pollution stigma,
according to Wadleigh, despite the $27 million cleanup.
"There is still the aura of a polluted harbor,"
he said.
"Waukegan was called the worst PCB mess in the country,"
recalled Cameron Davis, executive director of the Lake Michigan
Federation in Chicago, an environmental watchdog organization.
"Citizens played a major role to get OMC to the
table to get that cleanup," he said.
Environmentalists remain critical of OMC.
Paul Kakuris, a director of the Illinois Dunesland
Society, a Lake County conservation group, charges that OMC and the Johns
Manville Corp., which created an asbestos Superfund site in Waukegan, both have
tainted the region with pollution.
"These are two massive corporations in the process
of leaving the area, after committing atrocities to the environment," said
Kakuris. "It appears those corporations are getting off the hook."
Kakuris said contamination from both companies has
"a direct impact on the water supply of Lake Michigan for the entire
community, all the way down to Chicago."
Michael Bellot, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
remedial project manager for the OMC site, said he was surprised to hear OMC
was closing the Waukegan plant, since there were recent rumors that OMC
intended to move operations into Waukegan.
"Clearly there are wastes on the site and there are
concerns about what would happen" if a new tenant moved in, said Bellot.
"They are still on the hook with us for the long term" in maintaining
the PCB waste disposal sites, he said.
OMC officials say they are still considering the fate of
the 110-acre site.
Mary Walker, Waukegan Port District manager and president
of the Waukegan Downtown Association, said: "We know of people who are
looking for places to start a business or move a business. If anybody comes to
us, we always have these sites in the back of our minds.
"This is a great area for development. We will
definitely try to find users and create jobs. That's our goal."
As for pollution of the past, Walker added: "I could
say bad things about polluters, but that is what we did from the turn of the
century to the `60s. Now we are in the '90s and have a different attitude and
clean up our act. Now it's forgive and forget and move on."
(51) Treatment
of Tannery Wastes at the Griess-Pfleger Tannery, Waukegan, Illinois Author(s):
John W. Harnley, Frank R. Wagner and H. Gladys Swope Source: Sewage Works
Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Jul., 1940), pp. 771-799 Published by: Water Environment
Federation
Industrial Wastes TREATMENT OF TANNERY WASTES AT THE
GRIESS-PFLEGER TANNERY, WAUKEGAN, ILLINOIS
By John W. Harnley, Frank E. Wagner and H. Gladys Swope
Chief Chemist and Research Chemist, Griess-Pfleger
Tanning Co., and Chemist, North Shore Sanitary District
A cooperative investigation was begun in December, 1937,
between the Griess-Pfleger Tanning Company and the North Shore Sanitary
District for the purpose of studying the flow and characteristics of the
tannery waste effluent, in order to determine whether further treatment of this
waste should be provided at the Waukegan sewage treatment works.
This treatment plant is of the Imhoff type with chemical
treatment in the summer, and has been described by one of us.
The Tannery installed a treatment plant for their wastes in
1917. This consists of a coarse bar screen and two Dorr settling tanks, each of
170,000 gallons capacity. The clarified effluent has been discharged into Lake
Michigan.
The Gtriess-Pfleger Tanning Company The tannery is located
in the northeastern section of Waukegan on Sand Street, 3000 ft. west of Lake
Michigan. When operating at full capacity there are 650 employees. At maximum
capacity approximately 670,000 lb. of green salted domestic cattle hides are
tanned per week. At an average of 40 lb. per hide (15 to 60 lb. hides used)
this would be 16,875 hides or 33,750 sides and will produce more than one half
million sq. ft. of shoe leather. This goes primarily into shoe up pers and is
divided into the following classifications :
a. Work shoe upper leather
1. Work Elk in black, white
and colors
2. Retan in black and colors
b. Dress shoe upper leather
1. Russia side leather in
black, white and colors
2. Sport Elk side leather in
black, white and colors
3. Buck side leather in
white and colors
4. Heavy collegiate designed
leathers in black and colors
5. Waterproof upper leather
for rough sporting shoes c.
Splits By product
1. Quarter lining for shoes in black, white and colors
2. Retan splits
for lower grade work shoe uppers
3. Gusset stock for tongues of shoes
4. Glove stock for gloves
The principal
tanning process used is the chrome process. This process and those previous and
subsequent to tanning are, with a few exceptions which will be especially
noted, essentially the same throughout the industry.
The hides, as received at the tannery in the green-salted
state, are first trimmed, split into sides and then washed. A twenty-four hour
soak in fresh water with salt added follows. After this operation the hides are
soft and in the same physical condition as when they were flayed. The adipose
tissue is now removed from the flesh side (soak fleshing). The hides are then
soaked for two or more days in a saturated lime liquor with excess lime, to which
chemicals known as sharpening agents or accelerators may be added to shorten
the time required to loosen the hair. The principal sharpening agents in use at
present are sulfides and amines. Most tanneries use some sulfide but for a
number of years this tannery has used dimethylamine only. This has a very
important effect on the character of the waste effluent, which will be
discussed more fully later.
After liming and unhairing the hides are washed to remove
most of the lime remaining in them. They are then bated. This operation has two
functions and thus the bating solution has two components : one a deliming
agent such as ammonium sulfate to remove the lime not taken out by the wash;
and the other a proteolytic enzyme such as trypsin to remove, wholly or in
part, proteins such as elastin or kratose. Soaking, unhairing, deliming and
bating are all carried out in the department known as the beam house where the
largest amounts of water are used and thus the largest volume of waste effluent
originates there. This is also the source of the greatest amount of suspended
and soluble matter and is particularly characterized by its high alkalinity,
being practically saturated with lime.
Tan House.
After coming out of the bate the hides are treated with
salt and acid (pickling) preparatory to tanning with chromium sulfate. In
simple terms the tanning agent is basic chromium sulfate, CK2(S04)2(OH)2 and is
prepared by reducing a mixture of sodium bi chromate and sulfuric acid with
glucose. The process of tanning requires from several hours to several days
depending upon the equipment used and the type of leather produced. Treatment
with alkali, such as sodium bicarbonate, usually follows to neutralize excess
acid, and "set" the tannage. Although the waste tan liquors contain
large amounts of acid and highly colored (green) chromium salts, there is
present at all times in the beam house waste more than sufficient lime to
completely neutralize the acid and precipitate the chromium salts.
After chrome tanning, some of the hides are given a
second tanning (retanning) with vegetable extracts. These are principally
evaporated extracts of woods or barks that contain vegetable tannins.
Quebracho, chestnut, gambier and oak are typical examples. Sometimes these are
used with synthetic materials of similar chemical structure known as syntans.
Due to the objectionable red color imparted to the wastes by these materials,
all such wastes are segregated and lagooned over old sludge beds which act to
some extent as filters. The colorless filtrate is then pumped into the general
waste. (See the section on waste disposal equipment for further discussion.)
After tanning, the excess moisture is pressed from the
hides and they are leveled off in thickness by splitting and shaving. A wide
range of aniline dyes and natural dye woods are used to color the leather. The
color mill wastes are highly colored but their relative volume is small and the
coloring matter is removed by the alkalinity and suspended solids in the beam
house wastes.
The final operation prior to drying and finishing is
known as fat liquoring (stuffing, in the case of heavy leathers). It consists
of treating the leather with emulsions in water of various animal, fish,
vegetable and mineral oils for the purpose of keeping the leather soft and
flexible after it is dried. The oils are so completely taken up from the fat
liquor baths by the leather that no noticeable amounts of oils are in the waste
even before settling in the Dorr tanks. The only subsequent source of wastes is
from the finishing departments. Many materials are used in making finishes for
leather. The finishes or coatings commonly used are of three primary types ;
varnish, lacquer and water dispersed. At the present time most of the leather
manufactured in this tannery is finished with the latter type. These finishes
are essentially water dispersions of pigments and dyes, with binders such as
casein, glue or synthetic resins. The mixtures are usually brushed or sprayed
on to the leather by hand or machine and do not find their way into the waste
except through cleaning of equipment.
The concentration
of the waste is considerably affected by an un usual factor, that of dilution
by seepage water. This is due to the fact that the plant is surrounded on three
sides by low lying marshy soil. With an average lake level of 580.73 ft. above
sea level, Sand Street (where the tannery is located) is only 8.47 ft. above
lake level.
On June 14, 1940, the ground water level was found to be
5 ft. above city datum or 3 ft. below Sand Street. This condition causes the
effluent to be diluted with considerable quantities of seepage water, which
reaches volumes as high as 3,500,000 gallons per week. This volume has been
considerably reduced and subjected to some control during the past two years by
local drainage and by reducing and controlling the volume of sludge lagooned.
During 1939 the volume varied between no flow and an average monthly high of
1,970,000 gallons per week, and was primarily a function of the weather. At
maximum capacity, water consumption is 7 million gallons per week. Thus the
effluent would be between 7 and 8.97 million gallons per week as affected by
volume of seepage, and the dilution would be between 0 and 29 per cent.
Historical
The waste disposal problem was attacked even before the
completion of the tannery in 1916 and a study of the wastes has continued
intermittently but with a concentration of continuous activity during the past
five years. This latter activity was initiated when the State of Illinois Sanitary
Water Board, as part of its state wide survey of industrial wastes, asked
permission to make a study of the waste effluent from this plant. On October 29
and 30, 1936, they made a 48-hour survey. Samples of the individual components
of the influent to the Dorr tanks were collected and also two successive
24-hour composites of the Dorr tank influent and effluent. Volumes and chemical
characteristics were determined. The report of this survey led the management,
which has always had the desire to understand these problems, to instruct their
laboratory to develop and follow a program of investigation so as to be able to
meet criticism and suggestions with reasonable action. In the fall of 1937, the
North Shore Sanitary District, which has recently completed a sewage disposal
plant and laboratory in Waukegan, agreed to cooperate in this study as outlined
in the opening paragraph. In the course of the study three sets of samples were
taken ; throughout one week in December, 1937, the same in October, 1938, and
on two days in May, 1939. The data presented in this paper are part of the
information gained from results of analyses of these samples.
775 Table I presents the analytical data collected on the
effluent dis charged to the lake prior to this investigation. The type of
samples and the sources of the analyses are indicated. …
Tannery Waste Treatment Equipment.
…Thus the volume of waste can easily be determined for
any period, and composite sampling is accurately accomplished. The 14-in. pipe
line leading from the sump pumps to the Dorr clarifiers is 570 ft. long. This
line discharges into an open dividing chamber about 20 ft. above the lower sump
level. Adjustable dividers regulate the division of flow by gravity into the
two Dorr clarifiers. The capacity of each Dorr clarifier is 170,000 gallons.
They are 60 ft. in diameter, 10 ft. 4 in. deep at the center and 6 ft. 6 in.
deep at the edge. A baffle about the rim of each tank retains any floating
matter. The effluent flows into a catch basin and thence into the street sewer.
The detention periods reported in Tables II and III were calculated from the
theoretical capacity of 170,000 gallons per tank. Settling periods were checked
by adding dye to the influent to the tanks and measuring the volume of flow
until the appearance of the dye in the effluent. At the time of this test the
flow was evenly divided between the two tanks and the same results were
obtained from both tanks. The test indicated that the detention periods were
equivalent to volumes as follows : Minimum . 108,000 Maximum . 228,000
Effective. 160,000 Average . Slightly more than 160,000 As the bulk of the dye
came through at 160,000 gallons this is taken as the effective equivalent and
as more dye came through after this point than before, the average is believed
to be equivalent to a figure slightly over 160,000 gallons. These figures are
in fair agreement with the theoretical volume of 170,000* gallons. The sludge
from each tank as carried to the center by the scraper blades is pumped to the
sludge lagoon by a Hayton No. 34 special verti cal single plunger pump having
an 8 in. cylinder and a 12 in. stroke. All valves on the pump are ball valves.
A 10 h.p. motor at 1165 r.p.m. drives each pump through a belt and gear system
at 30 strokes per minute. The pumping rate, confirmed by test, is 80 gallons
per minute. Sludge disposal is not a problem since there is considerable area
of marsh to be filled close to the Dorr clarifiers. The procedure is to deposit
the sludge by a movable 8-in. pipe. The sludge bed formed is drained by ditches
leading back to the waste disposal system. When this bed reaches a given height
the pipe is moved to a new location. A small portion of the tannery waste
contains coloring matter from spent tanning extracts. By the simple expedient
of piping all such waste to an old sludge bed, drained by ditches, the bed
becomes a filter which effectively removes the color by chemical action with
the alkaline sludge and mechanical filtration. The decolorized waste then goes
into the general waste. As mentioned previously, one large sewage pump at the
sump is held in readiness in case of failure of the other. In case of power
failure, a steam siphon in the pump pit keeps the seepage water level low
enough to protect the motors, and a portable high speed gasoline pump may be
brought in to keep the sump level low. (In case of freezing, breakage or
clogging of the 14-in. pipe line leading from the sump to the Dorr clarifier s,
an emergency line may be used which empties into a ditched swamp.) Provision
has been made at the Dorr clarifier dividing chamber to turn the entire flow
into either tank, enabling the other one to be drained for repairs or cleaning.
It is difficult to conceive of any emergency arising that would curtail
processing due to the sewage system being disabled. The disruption of the power
supply for more than a short period would stop production for other reasons….
…Production is spoken of in terms of packs (4200 lb.
green-salted hides trimmed weight) going into soak. These packs remain units
until the end of the un-hairing process. Over a period of uniform production,
this figure as a weekly total is significant in connection with waste influent.
For single days or even for isolated weeks it has no significance. About 75 per
cent of the influent originates in the beam house and the major part of this
volume is a function of packs taken out of lime (unhaired). However, about 45
per cent of the solids in the influent originates in the lime liquors and these
are not dumped on the same day that the packs are taken out of them but during
a period of uniform production lime liquors dumped per week will equal packs in
soak per week. Thus the characteristics of any one day's influent are a
function of two major factors, the packs taken out of lime and the number of
lime liquors dumped and are also a function of a number of minor factors such
as packs going in and out of soak and production in other departments, the more
important in consideration with influent being the tanning, coloring and
fat-liquoring departments. In Fig. 1, production is shown in terms of packs
going into soak. There is a noticeable lag of about two weeks in the figures
for metered water used and influent. The period from April 13 through January
18, 1939 begins with zero production and ends with maximum production. The
effects of the various holidays are clearly shown, although those that occurred
during periods of increasing production are partially obliterated. Seepage
water is not metered but is considered to be the difference between influent
and metered water. However, it is known to be in excess of this because more
water is evaporated from the leathers in drying than is introduced in the
hides. Also other losses are known to occur so that with zero seepage the volume
of in fluent should be less than the volume of metered water….
Summary
(1) A joint
investigation was made by the Griess-Pfleger Tanning Co. and the North Shore
Sanitary District of the characteristics of the tannery waste to determine
whether further treatment at the Waukegan sewage treatment works was necessary.
(2) The tannery waste, 0.5 to 1.25 m.g.d., is divided
between and passed through two 170,000 Dorr settling tanks at the tannery.
(3) A total of 2088 Dorr tank influent, effluent and
sludge samples were collected in three sets; 7 days in December, 1937 7 days in
November, 1938 2 days in May, 1939 These samples were composited, proportional
to flow, for 24-hour pe riods and various shorter periods. The sampling and
analytical meth ods are described.
(4) Analytical results of the 24-hour composite samples
for total and suspended solids, organic and ammonia nitrogen, total and
phenolphthalein alkalinity and B.O.D. are shown along with previous ana lytical
data collected over a period of 20 years.
(5) The relationship between production and volume of
waste and distribution by days and hours is shown.
(6) The inherent variations in departmental production
from one day to another are described and equations are given for calculating
the weighted production of the various departments in relation to waste, and
the amounts of various components that may be expected to be found in the
wastes. These values are compared with those determined by analysis.
(7) The weights of the various components per pack (4200
lb. green salted trimmed weight) processed are given and process changes are
shown to affect these relationships.
(8) The general tannery processes are described and
factors affecting the tannery waste, that are peculiar to this tannery, are discussed.
1. Dilution by seepage water. 2. The use of dimethylamine in place of sulfides
as sharpening agents in lime liquors and the resultant effect on B.O.D. (9) The
waste disposal equipment is described. (10) The removal and disposal of sludge
from the Dorr tanks is discussed. (11) The prevention of scum on the surface of
the Dorr tanks is described. (12) The efficiency of the Dorr tank treatment is
shown by the 50 per cent reduction in B.O.D. and the 85 per cent reduction in
suspended solids but the possibility of increasing this efficiency by chemical
treat ment is mentioned. (13) The conclusion is drawn that the present
efficiency of the Dorr tanks is sufficient and as great as could be expected
from a primary treatment and that inasmuch as the Waukegan sewage treatment
plant is one of primary treatment only, further treatment of these wastes at
the Waukegan sewage treatment plant is not necessary.
(52) Chemical to
turn Negroes white is held impractical, Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburge, Fla,
Tues Sept 13, 1949, p 27
Chemical
to turn Negroes white is held impractical
By Science Service
Washington—the scientist who first investigated over a
decade ago the strange phenomenon of Negroes turning white, is authority for
the fact that the chemical treatment, given publicity in a national magazine,
is impractical and dangerous.
He is Dr. Louis Schwartz, a retired skin specialist of
the U. S. Public health service, living here.
He recalled that Negroes in a tannery at Waukegan, Ill.
Found that their arms and hands were turning white. The cause was traced to a
hydrocarbon in the rubber gloves they wore.
This effect has been the subject of hope exploited many
times that the color line might be broken, but applications on the skin are
slow and patchy and not satisfactory. No one has dared take the chemical internally,
as it would have to be administered to produce a uniform effect, because the
chemical is poisonous.
The chemical, the monobenzyl ether of hydroquionone is a
bleach that is used as a preventative of oxidizing of rubber (trade name
Age-Rite-Alba). It bleaches not Negro skin alone, but any dark pigment. It has
been used medically to bleach liver spots on white people.
Dr Schwartz recalls that when it was proposed to feed the
chemical to Negroes experimentally he could not secure any suitable volunteers.
(53)
Tannery to build $50,000 sewage disposal plant here Libertyville independent,
July 24, 1919
Tannery to build $50,000 sewage
disposal plant here
Give
this as argument to city not enforce cleaning sand street sewer
The
city is unimpressed
Waukegan
July 21
That
the Gries-Pfleger is planning to construct a sewage disposal plant upwards of
$50,000 is the information conveyed to Commissioner Peter McDermott by Edward F
Kiernan, general manager of the tanning company in response to the insistent
demand of the city that steps be taken immediately to remove the menace
resulting from the clogged sewer leading from the plant.
The
sewer became clogged as a result of the refuse poured into it by the tannery.
City officials served notice on the tannery people to abate the nuisance
immediately or legal steps would be taken by the city. Members of the city
commission on Monday night voted to insist on an immediate abatement of the
nuisance.
The
statement of Mr. Kiernan that the sewage disposal plant is planned came to
commissioner McDermott Tuesday in the form of a letter which stated that the
work of preparing plans for the proposed disposal plant have been underway for
the last six months. It was stated further that as soon as these plans are
completed they are to be submitted to the North Shore Sanitary district for
approval, and if approved the work of putting in the plant will be started
immediately.
Suggestion
was made that if Mr. McDermott so desired he might inspect these plans which
are on the file or suggest some means of removing the present clogged condition
of the sewer.
This
suggestion did not set very well with the commissioner and he wrote back at
once that what the city most desires at this time is to have the present sewer
cleaned out so that the menace to health will be removed—then the plans for a
sewage disposal can be taken up—but the city does not propose to wait until the
disposal plant is put up to have the sewer cleaned out. Whatever is done later
about treating the sewage the sewer must be cleaned out instead of being allowed
to remain in its present clogged condition.
The manufacturing facility at 1 East Water Street, has
deep roots in the local community of Waukegan, Illinois. Located on the
waterfront of beautiful Lake Michigan, the original facility was built in the
early 1900’s and first housed a tannery. In the mid-1930’s, Midland Industrial
Finishes opened its doors, founded by Edwin O. Robson. Midland manufactured
various coatings: can coatings, conduit coatings, primers, and bowling lane
finishes. The Dexter Corporation purchased the business in 1963, and it became known
as Dexter Midland Finishes. It started the production of coil coatings in the
1970’s along with all the other coating lines. In 1990, the Dexter Corporation
acquired Crown Metro, and the manufacturing site grew proportionately to
support the newly acquired business. As the aerospace coatings business grew,
Dexter sold its coil business in 1993, to AkzoNobel. It then formed a joint
venture with AkzoNobel Aerospace and the JV was called Akzo Dexter Aerospace
Finishes (ADAF). In 2000, AkzoNobel acquired Dexter Coatings to form the
current AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings.
North Shore Gas
North Shore Gas, a subsidiary of Integrys Business
Support, owns a 16 acre parcel of land at 849 N. Pershing Rd. in Waukegan
This land is the former site of a manufactured gas plant,
a facility that extracted natural gas from coal, hydrocarbons, and other fossil
fuel sources. The site is listed as a Region 5 Superfund site by the United
States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Waste products of the
extraction process include tars, sludges, and acids. Many of these wastes were
disposed of on site in a “tar pit” on the property. Other wastes were
accidentally released during site demolition in the 1960s. On site contaminants
include aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals.
The “tar pit” was excavated and cleaned in the 1992, but
further soil contamination was documented on the site outside of the “tar pit”
boundaries. Integrys entered an agreement with the USEPA in 2007 to prioritize
the cleanup of its former manufactured gas sites. Assessment of the site began
in 2012 and is ongoing. Long term potential of the site is unknown at this
time.
Akzo Nobel Aerospace Coatings
Akzo Nobel Aerospace Coatings (Akzo Nobel) is a
manufacturer of paints for use in high performance applications. The company
owns land north of the mouth of the Waukegan River. The facility houses
corporate offices and some manufacturing operations. A portion of the property
consists of vacant land that formerly housed industrial buildings. Along the
lakeshore is an area of land maintained as green space; it is mainly
disassociated trees and turf grasses. Akzo Noble has a cooperative working
relationship with the CAG, and they are currently working together to conduct
floristic and wildlife quality assessments of their property. Future
cooperation will be helpful for doing assessment and habitat management work of
the banks of the Waukegan River. Proximity to the river increases the
opportunity for non point source pollution from impervious surfaces to enter
the river and Lake Michigan. Akzo Noble could implement green infrastructure
practices to reduce the impact on the river, with a focus on storm water
management.
Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railroad
CN owns the former EJ&J, a local railroad that runs
along the lakeshore. The EJ&J was formed via mergers of smaller railroads
that serviced the industrial towns around Chicago. It was eventually purchased
by U.S. Steel to provide freight efficiencies to its plants in Waukegan, Chicago,
and Gary, Indiana. The line formerly had a switching and maintenance yard in
Waukegan, immediately north of the Waukegan Works. With the demise of industry
in the area this switching yard was demolished in he 1980s. U.S. Steel sold the
line to Canadian National Railway, which divested some of the trackage and
absorbed the rest into its operations, including trackage around Waukegan
Harbor. The line still provides local connections for industries located along
the lake shore. Currently, the line runs from its terminus at the Midwest
Generation power plant south along the lake shore, turning west at the south
end of the AbbVie property and out of the ESA. Most of the river bank along
this property is stabilized with rip rap stone. The lowest portion of the river
bank is in similar condition to the Akzo Nobel property
(55) The Lake
Effect by Nancy Nichols Publisher: Shearwater; 2 edition (August 30, 2010)
Paperback: 192 pages
By the time the PCB problem was isolated in January 1976,
the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency believed that Outboard Marine was
delivering approximately nine to ten tons of PCBs to the harbor each day. The
PCB content of the sludge at the bottom of the harbor ranged from 240,000 to
500,000 parts per million depending on when and where the sample was taken.
That means that either one in two or one in four grains of sand or silt at the
bottom of the harbor was not actually sand or silt, but was a PCB instead. page
43
Waukegan would take its turn on the national stage two
years later, in 1984,when a U.S. Environmental Protection official, Rita
Lavelle, was accused of secretly meeting with lakefront polluters in an effort
to strike a cleanup deal that heavily favored industry… In the aftermath of the
scandal, the full extent of Waukegan’s chemical contamination was revealed…
Eventually, three separate Superfund sites, named after the 1980 federal
legislation that allocated funds to clean them up, were designated in Waukegan.
Two of the sites are adjacent to the lake… In addition, more than a dozen other
sites form what federal and state regulators call an expanded study area, which
stretches along the lakefront from one end of town to the other. These smaller
sites contain the waste products from a tannery, a steel company, a paint factory,
a pharmaceutical company, and a scrap yard. Together these sites contain not
just PCBs, but an alphabet soup of pollutants. “Just about every chemical we
know to be dangerous to human health is in one of those sites,” Says Margaret
Quinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who specializes
in human exposure assessment. In addition to PCBs, these chemicals include
benzene and other volatile organic compounds, arsenic. lead, asbestos,
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, vinyl chloride, and ammonia.
Various chemicals among these have been associated with reproductive diseases,
learning and attention deficits in children, birth defects, immune system
deficiencies, and some forms of cancer.
Was there a relationship between my sister’s cancer and
the toxins of our childhood? My sister certainly thought so. And many other
people have suspected, often correctly, that elements in their environment have
had an effect on their health. Yet because of the long time it takes for a cancer
to develop and because of relative mobility of our lives today, it can be
challenging to establish a casual link between a disease and its origin.
pages 5 -6
“Ovaries are approximately three centimeters long by one
and one-half centimeters wide by one centimeter thick,” writes Ethel Sloan in,
“The Biology of Women.”… Whichever edition you consult will tell you that the
ovary is about the size of an almond and that it produces the female hormone
estrogen. During the monthly menstrual cycle, each ovary forces an egg through
a wall of tissue and afterward repairs that rupture in a process called
ovulation. “The ovary is no beauty,” writes Natalie Angier in “Woman: An
Intimate Geography, “It is scarred and pitted, for each cycle of ovulation
leaves behind a blemish where an egg follicle has been emptied of its contents.
The older the woman, the more scarred her ovaries will be. It is this continual
bursting and repairing–part and parcel of the ovarian life cycle–that makes the
ovary vulnerable to cancer.
Scientists have long theorized that as cells multiply
each month to repair the breach in the ovarian wall, more opportunities are
created for mistakes in the DNA copying process, which in turn increases the
chances of a malignant mutation. More ovulations, in other words, mean more
chances for mistakes.
Risk factors for the disease therefore include never
giving your ovaries a break by being pregnant or having a child. The other risk
factor is having a close relative with the disease. That would be my sister, of
course, and that would bring our story back home….
Doctors at this hospital and elsewhere have long
speculated that there were significant environmental factors associated with
ovarian cancer. The vagina provides a runway to the ovaries not simply for sperm
but for many other substances as well. Significantly, women who have their
tubes tied experience a lower rate of ovarian cancer than those who do not.
Some have theorized that this may be because the pathways to the ovaries has
been blocked, keeping outside agents at bay.
For example, some researchers have found a link between
talcum powder and ovarian cancer–though several other studies have produced
conflicting results. Some early forms of talcum may have contained asbestos and
thus given researchers their positive findings. Indeed, at least one
retrospective study found a much higher disease rate among women who used talc
prior to 1960 than those who used is after–giving at least some credence to the
idea that the use of asbestos-laden talc increases a woman’s risk of ovarian
cancer.
My sister speculated that asbestos had contributed to her
illness. A group of naturally occurring fibrous materials that are
fire-resistant, asbestos has been thought to cause adverse health effects since
the first century. Yet, as writer Paul Brodeur tells us in his book on
asbestos, Outrageous Misconduct, its role in causing the disease asbestosis, a
noncancerous condition in which the lungs scar so badly that they won’t expand
and contract properly, was not well established in medical literature until the
1970s.
In the years before my sister died, when I was an editor
for the Harvard Business Review, I worked on a piece written by Bill Sells, the
man who had run the Johns-Manville plants in Waukegan in the early 1970s–a time
when deaths from asbestosis and other asbestos-related diseases were beginning
to occur in the workforce at an alarming rate. After noting that his job
included the unenviable task of visiting his sick and dying employees at the
local hospital, he offered this description of his first visit to the factory:
“The plant lay at the back of a sprawling complex built in the 1920s. Its view
of Lake Michigan was obscured by a landfill several stories high. A road wound
through this mountain of asbestos-laden scrap, and as I drove through it for
the first time I stopped to watch a bulldozer crush a 36-inch sewer pipe. A
cloud of dust swirled around my car.” Inside the plant, he said, he found
“asbestos-laden dust coating almost every visible surface.”
An EPA official charged with overseeing the cleanup of
the Johns-Manville plant, Brad Bradley, has a similar recollection. Standing at
the edge of the 350-acre Superfund site that overlooks Lake Michigan, Bradley
recalled his first visit there in 1982. He remembers asking an asbestos expert
where he thought they would find the fibers. “I think they are everywhere,”
said the expert. Indeed, virtually anywhere on the site that Bradley scuffed
the ground with his boot, he found the telltale fibers.
People are more likely to connect the fiber with
asbestosis than with ovarian cancer. However, a thirty-year study of nearly two
thousand women who worked with asbestos while manufacturing gas masks during
World War II showed these women to be seven times more likely to die from
ovarian cancer than a control group. My sister’s medical history seems to tell
a different story, though, and the link between asbestos and ovarian cancer in
general does not appear to be a strong one. The ovarian cancer specialist I saw
at the clinic was quick to point out that my sister’s record indicated that her
cancer was preceded by endometriosis.
The phrase “painful periods” does not begin to describe
the torture that my mother and sister endured during menstruation. White and
sweating, doubled over with pain, they retreated to the bed or the couch until
the pain and the bleeding passed. When I recounted my mother’s experience, the
ovarian cancer specialist suggests that my mother also likely suffered from
endometriosis.
Endometriosis is a once rare disease that is now common.
When the disease was first named and discovered in 1921 by a New York
physician, there were only twenty reports of the illness in the medical
literature. Today, the National Institutes of Health estimates that roughly 5.5
million women suffer from the disease in the United States, and as many as 89
million women may have it worldwide. An exact number is hard to come by, since
the disease can only properly be diagnosed during surgery. Still, about
one-third of women of childbearing age suffer some symptoms–including pelvic
pain and infertility–and in the United States at least, the average age of
onset has been declining…
Endometriosis is a complex condition, and no one is
certain what causes it. Some scientists believe it is an immune system
disorder. Others believe that women with endometriosis lack the ability to shed
cells that have migrated and are growing where they should not be. Other
scientists have focused on a genetic component of the disease since it can run
in families. A woman with a sister or mother with endometriosis, for example,
is three to seven times more likely to get the disease.
The mechanisms of endometriosis are not that different
from those that create cancer: they involve cell proliferation, the migration
of cells, and a change in their cellular nature. Endometriosis grows unchecked
and invades surrounding tissues, and the body’s immune system fails to rid
itself of the misplaced lesions. In the same way, the body fails to rid itself
of cancerous lesions.
It is often but not always the case that the kind of
cancer my sister suffered from, ovarian clear-cell adenocarcinoma, is preceded
by endometriosis, and many believe that there is a relationship between the two
diseases. Some scientists believe that endometriosis–in certain cases–is a kind
of precancerous condition, and others believe that the two diseases spring
forth in unison. Other experts theorize that the endometrial cells themselves
drive the proliferation of cancer once it has started by producing their own
estrogen. Each lesion is capable of increasing the local production of
estrogen, so that once the disease takes hold it is capable of feeding itself.
In my sister’s case, cancerous growths arose within her
endometrial lesions. Whatever the exact mechanism of disease development, women
with the type of ovarian cancer that my sister suffered from have higher rates
of endometriosis that the general female population. In one study, about 70
percent of the women with clear-cell ovarian cancer also had endometriosis.
Scientists have long suspected that chemicals of the type
found in Waukegan–dioxins, PCBs, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs)–play a role in human endometriosis.
pages 75 – 81
Carson died in 1964, but her work and her life serve as a
warning to everyone who struggles with cancer. “As we pour millions into
research and invest all our hopes in vast programs to find cures for
established cases of cancer,” she wrote, “we are neglecting the golden
opportunity to prevent, even while we seek to cure.”
Carson’s favorite quote, from Abraham Lincoln, can be
found snuggled into her almost daily letters to Freeman, where she explains
what keeps her going through her treatments and on to finish her groundbreaking
book. It reads: “To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of
men.”
page 122
(56) Asbestos Plant In Waukegan Nears The End, Chicago
Tribune, Oct 10, 2000
Asbestos
Plant In Waukegan Nears The End
Manville Site To Be Cleaned, Razed
October 10, 2000| By John Flink. Special to the Tribune.
Crews are hard at work demolishing the
sprawling Johns Manville complex on Waukegan's lakefront the environmentally
friendly way--from the inside out.
Machinery and other equipment deemed useful for other
Johns Manville plants is long gone. So are the easy-to-reach forms of asbestos
such as the insulation that once wrapped miles of pipes within the
complex.
The current, final phase of the demolition involves
carefully removing built-in asbestos from the interior of the buildings, then
from the exterior.
When virtually all of the asbestos is gone, the empty
building shells will be knocked down under a shroud of water to keep dust from
being blown off the site.
"The buildings will be reduced to flat concrete
pads, which will then be pressure-washed and crushed," said Denny Clinton,
manager of engineering and technology for the company's roofing group
and manager of the Waukegan demolition. "It will be a very thorough
process."
Much of that process is mandated by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, which sets rules for cleanup projects. Some of
the steps the company is taking aren't in the EPA rulebook, such as the seven
sensors placed around the site to detect errant asbestos dust, Clinton said.
The Denver-based building-products company, Clinton said,
has experience in tearing down asbestos-tainted properties and restoring the
land left behind. The company has closed and demolished similar plants in
Manville, N.J.; Carson, Calif.; and Toronto in recent years.
Work on the Waukegan plant began last fall. The final
phase began recently.
The 1.8 million-square-foot Waukegan plant was built from
1919 to 1922 and designed to accommodate the long and narrow machinery
necessary to manufacture asbestos products such as roofing,
insulation and gaskets.
Johns Manville filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982
after the discovery that asbestos was harmful resulted in more than 12,000
lawsuits filed against the company.
The Waukegan plant continued to manufacture asbestos
products until 1985, when it switched to products such as floor tile that
didn't contain the substance.
The area around the plant was declared a federal
Superfund cleanup site in 1983. Cleanup was completed in 1991. The EPA last
year declared that the capped landfill is sound.
The company emerged from Chapter 11 in 1988 after
assigning 80 percent of its stock to a trust dedicated to settling claims.
Today the company has 8,500 employees at 55 plants around
the world, concentrated primarily in the United States and Germany, said Bruce
Ray, Manville's corporate legal counsel for environmental issues.
The Waukegan plant was closed for good in 1996. The
company decided to raze the buildings shortly thereafter because federal
law would hold Manville liable for any future contamination problems, even if
future owners didn't maintain the buildings properly.
This summer, the company signed a letter of
intent with the Waukegan Park District to sell the district about 100 acres of
the site to be redeveloped into a sports complex to provide sorely needed
soccer fields and other amenities.
A price for the land will be determined after
environmental consultants working for the Park District have determined that
the area is safe.
"We've decided that the best use of the land is for
recreational purposes, as a legacy of the plant's contribution to the
community," Ray said. "Demolition is scheduled to be completed by the
end of 2001, but the Park District should be able to start on its project within
that time frame."
by Steve
Korris , Madison St Clair Record. Jun.
17, 2005
A lesson in history
Henry Ward Johns started experimenting
with asbestos in 1879, at age 21. His work laid the foundation of Johns
Manville, a great American business. It also killed him.
A coroner attributed Johns' death at age 40 in 1898 to "dust phthisis pneumonitis." But hindsight makes obvious what the coroner missed--Johns had inhaled asbestos fibers, which irritated his lungs and eventually destroyed them.
Nineteenth century doctors did not recognize a connection between asbestos and lung disease, although circumstantial evidence had offered itself 2,000 years ago.
Nobles of the Roman Empire impressed dinner guests by throwing asbestos napkins into fireplaces and bringing the napkins out whole and white. Roman historians noted that some slaves coughed a lot and died young. These slaves had woven asbestos napkins.
Medical research on the effects of asbestos exposure began in 1924. In 1927, doctors identified lung damage from asbestos as a disease. They called it asbestosis.
A foreman in the weaving department of a Massachusetts asbestos factory filed a worker’s compensation claim in 1927. The state awarded compensation.
Other early examples include:
A coroner attributed Johns' death at age 40 in 1898 to "dust phthisis pneumonitis." But hindsight makes obvious what the coroner missed--Johns had inhaled asbestos fibers, which irritated his lungs and eventually destroyed them.
Nineteenth century doctors did not recognize a connection between asbestos and lung disease, although circumstantial evidence had offered itself 2,000 years ago.
Nobles of the Roman Empire impressed dinner guests by throwing asbestos napkins into fireplaces and bringing the napkins out whole and white. Roman historians noted that some slaves coughed a lot and died young. These slaves had woven asbestos napkins.
Medical research on the effects of asbestos exposure began in 1924. In 1927, doctors identified lung damage from asbestos as a disease. They called it asbestosis.
A foreman in the weaving department of a Massachusetts asbestos factory filed a worker’s compensation claim in 1927. The state awarded compensation.
Other early examples include:
In 1929, 11 workers sued Johns Manville for asbestos exposure. They
settled in 1933 for $30,000.
In 1932, a maintenance worker in a federal hospital filed an asbestosis
claim that resulted in the first disability award.
In 1935, workers at a Johns Manville plant in Waukegan sued the company.
A judge threw out the suit, saying the workers had no right of recovery at
common law or through worker’s compensation.
That decision curtailed litigation until 1957, when a worker sued Johns Manville. The plaintiff and the company settled in 1959 for $35,000.
That decision curtailed litigation until 1957, when a worker sued Johns Manville. The plaintiff and the company settled in 1959 for $35,000.
In 1960, a worker sued Eagle-Picher. The plaintiff died, and his widow
pursued the case. Her amended petition added Johns Manville, U.S. Rubber, Owens
Corning Fiberglas, and seven other companies as defendants.
The multiple defendant strategy backfired. A judge dismissed the suit, saying the widow could not prove whose products her husband had used.
The multiple defendant strategy backfired. A judge dismissed the suit, saying the widow could not prove whose products her husband had used.
In 1961, a worker filed a wrongful death suit against Johns Manville. He
and the company settled for about $10,000.
In 1964, doctors at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City
published a study estimating that 21 million Americans had been exposed to
asbestos at work from 1940 to 1980. The study predicted 8,000 to 10,000 deaths
a year for the next 20 years.
Asbestosis suits increased. More and more plaintiffs named multiple defendants.
Asbestosis suits increased. More and more plaintiffs named multiple defendants.
The widow of a plaintiff in federal court in Texas won a judgment of
almost $80,000 against 11 manufacturers. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
affirmed in 1973, ruling that multiple defendants could be held jointly and
severally liable for damages.
In 1975, a jury in a Minnesota federal court ordered Johns Manville to
pay $200,000 to a plaintiff, Karjala, who had worked for the company from 1948
to 1966.
The company appealed under the statute of limitations. The appellate court ruled that the statute started to run when harm manifested itself, adding that when harm manifested itself was a jury question.
The company appealed under the statute of limitations. The appellate court ruled that the statute started to run when harm manifested itself, adding that when harm manifested itself was a jury question.
Hundreds of workers and survivors of workers at a Texas factory that
made sleeves for pipes on Navy ships sued manufacturers and the United States.
A 1977 settlement provided $20 million including $5.7 million from the federal
government.
In 1982, five juries awarded more than $3
million to Johns Manville plaintiffs. The company faced 16,500 asbestos suits.
Its legal fees ran to $2 million a month.
The company’s owners estimated that their liabilities exceeded their net worth and their insurance limits combined. Johns Manville declared bankruptcy.
In the next 20 years, 77 more companies attributed bankruptcies to asbestos liability.
According to Barry Castleman, author of "Asbestos – Medical and Legal Aspects," published by Aspen, about $70 billion in damages have been paid, with projections of ultimate payments of $200 billion.
According to "Forecasting Product Liability Claims," a textbook published by Springer, plaintiffs have sued more than 6,000 companies in virtually every industry.
The book says the number of defendants per case grew from 20 in the 1980s to 60 or 70 in the 1990s.
At the end of 2002, the book says, about 250,000 asbestos claims were pending in state and federal courts.
The company’s owners estimated that their liabilities exceeded their net worth and their insurance limits combined. Johns Manville declared bankruptcy.
In the next 20 years, 77 more companies attributed bankruptcies to asbestos liability.
According to Barry Castleman, author of "Asbestos – Medical and Legal Aspects," published by Aspen, about $70 billion in damages have been paid, with projections of ultimate payments of $200 billion.
According to "Forecasting Product Liability Claims," a textbook published by Springer, plaintiffs have sued more than 6,000 companies in virtually every industry.
The book says the number of defendants per case grew from 20 in the 1980s to 60 or 70 in the 1990s.
At the end of 2002, the book says, about 250,000 asbestos claims were pending in state and federal courts.
(58)
Asbestos-ridden lakefront land remains in limbo in Waukegan Dan Moran
Contact Reporter News-Sun
July 2,2015
Asbestos-ridden
lakefront land remains in limbo in Waukegan
More than 30 years have passed since the asbestos-ridden
Johns Manville property in Waukegan became one of the first Superfund
cleanup sites in Illinois.
As of this spring, whether or not the lakefront site ever
becomes more than a vacant, fenced-in lot still remains an open question.
In April, officials with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency reportedly told the Waukegan Citizens Advisory Group (CAG)
that portions of the 350-acre parcel north of Greenwood Avenue still have
significant depths of asbestos, meaning that most of the area will not be
cleared for public use even after the land is capped and covered with clean
soil.
Susie Schreiber, who chairs the city's advisory group,
said discussion at that meeting focused on a map of the property showing a
110-acre parcel on the west — colored in green — where Johns Manville
manufactured asbestos from 1928 through 1985. To the east, where some 3 million
cubic yards of asbestos-containing materials were dumped, a 217-acre parcel was
colored in blue.
"We were told that the green area may or may not be
developed, depending on the will of the property owner and the neighbors,"
she said. "With the blue area, it was definitely stated that it cannot be
used at all. It will be fenced off."
Schreiber added that there was also informal discussion
about how even that blue zone can have a beneficial use, such as a grassland
preserve for native plants and birds that would act as a buffer for Illinois
Beach State Park immediately to the north
In general, she said, the goal is to create a result that
will not clash with such amenities as Bowen Park to the west and a residential
area just north of that.
"One of the concerns about all these sites on the
lakefront is you can't just look at that specific site — you have to look at
the sites around it so that you integrate them and they are being worked
compatibly," Schreiber said. "After you get the cleanup done, is your
use compatible from A to B? One (use) could be condos and one could be open
space and one could be recreational."
According to a Community Involvement Plan of Waukegan
Superfund sites released in May by the EPA, active construction or cleanup
efforts at the site should be completed by 2016. The report added that since
asbestos "does not significantly break down over time, the site will need
perpetual monitoring and maintenance activities."
As for the specific question of whether the property will
be left as a brownfield, the report stated: "No. The site is being cleaned
up under other federal and state programs," and a final, long-term use
will be determined when the work is complete.
The EPA first started cleaning up the property in 1982,
and the agency reported that "lead, chrome, thiram, and xylene were also
disposed in the landfill area, but the primary contaminant of concern was
asbestos. Before the remediation, asbestos-containing sludge was located at the
landfill surface in many areas and could easily become airborne."
Additional rounds of remediation took place in the late
1980s and late 1990s, with significant work taking place in 2002 after
lingering asbestos was found at Illinois Beach State Park. More recently, work
began in 2012 on four parcels around the property away from the old landfill
that were found to have contamination.
In 2000, the Waukegan Park District eyed the site for a
115-acre sports complex that would have included 23 soccer fields, five
baseball/softball fields and parking for up to 2,000 cars. After years of
environmental testing — a process that at one point indicated the land would be
clean enough to proceed — the district did not receive the "no further
remediation" letter it sought from the EPA. A complex was instead
developed on Green Bay Road.
Recalling the proposed Manville venture this week, park
district executive director Greg Petry said even in light of the decision to
turn away from the lakefront site, he still hopes some other party can deliver
a public use for the property in the future.
"Never say never," Petry said. "You never
know what the right development for that site could be. There's got to be some
future use."
Schreiber said public meetings will have to be held at
some point to help determine what that use might be, and she noted that early
opinions have already been expressed on the plan to fence off the land.
"In April," she said, "somebody asked,
'Will it be a penitentiary-type fence?' and (the EPA) said, 'No, it will be
chain-link,' so it's not going to be barbed-wire or that kind of stuff."
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