EAST SIDE — A federal agency should abandon its plans to expand a lakefront dump site for polluted sediment and find other ways of handling the toxic material, a top state official said last week.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates a 43-acre “confined disposal facility” in neighboring Calumet Park, which stores material dredged from the Calumet River and five other federally maintained waterways in the city. The facility is on land owned by the Park District, which does not charge the Army Corps for its use.
The Army Corps decided in 2020 to build a new facility on the site, which would store more than 1 million cubic yards of sediment. The agency’s plans would renege on a pledge to return the lakefront property to the Park District once it was full…