Opponents of the taller stack — including state Rep. Rita Mayfield, D-Waukegan, who asked to make a rare-but-not-unprecedented speech ahead of the vote — have argued that the stack will “purposefully skew” the results of future air testing.
The taller stack is a “workaround” proposed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, which Mayfield accused of providing “misinformation” to her and other elected officials about “the seriousness of Medline’s emissions.”
“I don’t appreciate them telling me we don’t have an EtO (ethylene oxide) problem in Illinois when the data clearly shows that we do,” Mayfield added. “I don’t appreciate the Illinois EPA working against the citizens of Waukegan to help a business to pollute, not just us, but by increasing the stack height, push the poison farther out to neighboring communities.”
Source and full article: Lake County News-Sun
