Water contamination in Crestwood, Illinois, United States, a village in Cook County, was discovered in April 2009 by Tricia Krause, who reached out to local newspapers, which reported that the city had been using a well which was contaminated with toxic chemicals as the village's drinking water for 40 years.
Timeline of events April 2009 Tricia Krause and Tim Janecyk reached out to the Tribune In April 2009, Tim Janecyk and Tricia Krause reached out to the local newspapers. Tim initiated the tip to her and told her it was Crestwood officials who poisoned her family. She achieved all information regarding the contaminated water from her lengthy investigation. She had done research since 1999 seeking to find answers as to why her children were plagued with life-threatening health issues for now more than 30 years. She had given a journalist several large boxes of documentation of her detailed research about Crestwood.
Tricia Krause's records showed that in 1986, after the Illinois EPA had told them that Municipal Well #1 was contaminated, Crestwood officials had promised to start drawing all of their water from Lake Michigan, and to use the contaminated well only in emergencies. Instead, the well remained in use until December 2007. In 2007 the well was tested by the Illinois EPA for the first time in 20 years. The EPA also learned at that time that the well was still in regular use. Residents were not notified of the contamination by the Illinois EPA, the Illinois Department of Public Health or by the village.
Although the Illinois EPA claimed that they discovered the "illegal and secret" use of the well in late 2007, they never notified the residents of Crestwood that they had been drinking contaminated well water for more than twenty years.
Source of the contamination "The most likely source of the contamination is a dry cleaners in a strip mall less than 300 feet from Crestwood's well, just across a narrow, tree-lined creek that drains into the nearby Cal-Sag Channel." The likely source of the contamination also emerged in 1986, when a company that owned the strip mall housing the dry cleaners tried to join an EPA cleanup program.
According to a story in the SouthTown Star newspaper, "Choong Suk Joo operated the dry cleaners for nearly 30 years out of what was then called Playfield Plaza."
The owner of the mall indicated that "from his knowledge the family had moved back to their native Korea." In addition, not one newspaper or news media channel ever reported that the engineering company that provided reports to the village of Crestwood indicated to hide the use of the well to the state.
The contaminants Crestwood's public water supply was contaminated with perchloroethylene, or PCE, a dry-cleaning solvent linked to minor liver damage and neurological problems and vinyl chloride.
PCE is widely used as industrial solvents in particular for degreasing and cleaning metal parts and electronic components, and in dry cleaning.
PCE is known to break down in the environment into vinyl chloride.
Exposure to vinyl chloride, a known human carcinogen, can cause a number of health problems including blood tumors, liver tumors, liver cancer, permanent liver damage, immune system damage, nerve damage, reproductive effects.
The lowest levels (of vinyl chloride exposure) that produce liver changes, nerve damage, and immune reaction in people are not known. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that vinyl chloride is not safe to consume at any level. The most commonly recognized vinyl chloride related cancers include primary non-angiosarcoma liver cancer, primary brain cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, and cancers of the blood and blood-forming organs. The non-malignant diseases caused by vinyl chloride exposure are systemic and serious, often resulting in a systemic sclerosis of the body as a whole, and are known outside the United States as "vinyl chloride disease."
Additional health concerns Crestwood's municipal well is situated within 200 feet of Tinley Creek and approximately 800 feet from the Cal Sag Channel.
Both Tinley Creek and the Cal Sag Channel are located within the well's LAI or Lateral Area of Influence if the well is contributing more than approximately 13% of the village's drinking water supply.
Tinley Creek is consistently within the well's modeled zone of groundwater capture and lateral area of influence according to diagrams on the website of the Illinois EPA.
Although both bodies of water are in close proximity to Municipal Well #1, the impact of the contamination consequences and their dangers to the residents of Crestwood that received their drinking water from the public water supply has not been studied.
As of 2006 the Cal Sag Channel was used as a conduit for wastewater from southern Cook County, including the Chicago-area Deep Tunnel Project, into the Illinois Waterway. The Cal Sag Channel was originally engineered as "essentially an open sewage pipe to convey human and animal waste downstream." Due to concern over disposing of contaminated sediments, no dredging activities have occurred since 1972. Today, 90 percent of the Cal Sag Channel's flow originates as run off and municipal or industrial effluent, cooling and process water and storm water overflows.
The Cal Sag Channel is a part of the highly polluted Calumet River system.
The "best-run town in America" When Chester Stranczek started rebating property taxes to every homeowner during the mid-1990s, the action was so unusual the National Enquirer declared Crestwood the "best-run town in America."
"America's best small town mayor, Chester Stranczek, mayor of Crestwood, Illinois, is calling it quits after 50 years of public service." wrote Kristen Schorsch, a Daily Southtown staff writer, in an article published on August 1, 2007.
"If you want to define success, you can define in two words, Chester Stranczek." Schorsch elaborated in the 2007 story.
The June 2001 edition of the Crestwood Adviser, a village newsletter, is one of several that touts low water rates. Next to a portrait of Stranczek, it states: "… we can save you a lot of time by saying that Crestwood water has passed all the tests prescribed by the EPA during the past year. The results were very favorable, and we have safe drinking water."
In an interview with National Public Radio on October 17, 2007, producer Sam Hudzik said:
Stranczek's most proud of his more practical work as mayor. He runs the village just like the two businesses he founded. That mentality has led to a reputation as a stern administrator who leads Crestwood and the members of its elected board like a monarch. With few exceptions, projects he likes get approved. And nothing else stands a chance.
Hudzik interviewed Chester Stranczek in 2007 after he announced his retirement. Hudzik asked the people in the establishment what they thought of the soon to retire mayor. "What the hostess, a waitress and the breakfast crowd mention first about Stranczek is the one-of-a-kind property tax refund he arranges for homeowners." The NPR reporter summed up local sentiment concerning Chester Stranczek appointing his son Robert to be the next mayor of Crestwood, one replied "the folks at Country House Restaurant are fine with it - just so long as the tax rebates keep coming."
Chester Stranczek has not been challenged for office since 1973.
"I know every inch of Crestwood," Stranczek told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997. "I know every curb, every sidewalk, every stormwater drain. I know all the dikes. I built most of them."
"As village officials were building a national reputation for pinching pennies, and sending out fliers proclaiming Crestwood water was 'Good to taste but not to waste!,' state and village records show they secretly were drawing water from a contaminated well, apparently to save money."
Mayor Chester Stranczek summed up his management style at a village meeting saying "I run this town with an iron fist."
Nick Valadez, a candidate for Cook County Commissioner in 2010 has a different take on Stranczek's rebates "While the village has played politics with the taxpayers—returning their taxes for votes—they turned their back on public safety. For the past quarter century or more, Crestwood residents have been drinking poisoned water" Valadez wrote on his campaign website. Valadez also said on the website "Chester Stranczek built his 50-year career on refunding village taxes to voters."
Whistleblowers It was the work of two private citizens who became "whistleblowers" that brought the scandal to the attention of the public. Chicago WLS TV Channel 7's Paul Miencke reported on May 4, 2009 that "the story started with a man, Tim Janecyk, who was angry with police and politics in Crestwood after his wife was arrested for leaving their child in the car while she put money in a Salvation Army kettle in 2007." Meincke went on to say in that report "Janecyk joined forces with Tricia Krause, a woman who has spent more than ten years trying to convince others that something in Crestwood caused her children to develop cancer. She submitted dozens and dozens of FOIA requests to the IEPA demanding information about possible contributing factors. The IEPA response was "you'll never get anywhere; just drop it!". Her children have been plagued with various life-threatening health issues for more than twenty years. In 1999, Crestwood resident, Tricia Krause began trying to find answers as to why her three children were suffering almost constantly from a variety of illnesses ranging from viral meningitis, liver damage, acute pylonethritis, atypical bacteria infections, septic, staph infections, organ failure, whooping cough, neurological problems, compromised immune systems, a brain tumor to leukemia. In September 2015; she, in fact, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Her two babysitters were both diagnosed with brain tumors. She eventually found herself in Springfield, Illinois poring over documents at the state's EPA office. She discovered the well water which residents and the state were told was no longer in use was in fact being mixed with Lake Michigan water, sometimes by as much as almost 30 percent. This is the figure they provided to the USEPA federal investigators and IEPA officials. She later learned they used the well every day until the well went dry. It was never 20%, or 30%; it was all the time! The local baseball fields were saturated with contaminated toxic water. She researched for more than a decade, held numerous local town meetings, created her own epidemiological map and investigated every possible contributing factor. " Congressman Bobby Rush wrote about Tricia Krause in a press release "The government is supposed to protect its people but in this case it appears the Village of Crestwood did the complete opposite," Rush said. "Tricia Krause is an American hero for being brave enough, strong enough and persistent enough to expose this environmental travesty and get justice for the people of Crestwood."
Janecyk had been looking into rumors that the Village of Crestwood had been mixing contaminated water into the drinking water supply in early 2008. It was a somewhat cryptic posting on an internet website, Topix.com, on July 24, 2008, that affirmed the validity of his suspicions concerning the secret use of the contaminated well. The posting read "Is it just me or does the Crestwood tap water taste like its half city water and half Well water." The identity of this poster or their intentions has never been made public.