Opinion ID: 2003432
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alleged Abdication of Responsibility in Failing to Consider the Environmental Impact of Balefill

Text: Count III further alleges injuries resulting from the Cook County board's abdication of its responsibility to consider the deleterious environmental impact of the proposed balefill where, instead of conducting its own environmental studies, it granted a preliminary permit conditioned upon the Agency's approval and issuance of a development permit. In support, the plaintiff municipalities cite to section 39(c) of the Act, which mandates that county boards approve the siting of solid waste facilities in unincorporated portions of their counties. 415 ILCS 5/39(c) (West 1992). The Act was amended in 1981 to require local government siting approval as a precondition to the issuance of an Agency permit. (415 ILCS 5/39(c) (West 1992).) Prior to the amendment, this court had ruled that zoning ordinances of non-home-rule units of local government related to facilities governed under the Act were preempted by the Act. (See County of Cook v. John Sexton Contractors Co. (1979), 75 Ill.2d 494, 514-15, 27 Ill.Dec. 489, 389 N.E.2d 553.) The amendment overruled this decision and made clear all units of local government, home rule and non-home-rule alike, have concurrent jurisdiction with the Agency in approving siting, because section 39(c) now requires local government approval of all proposed pollution control facilities. This concurrent jurisdiction, however, does not require that the Cook County board act as a local environmental protection agency in considering a proposed site, thus duplicating the exhaustive efforts of the Agency in assessing the environmental impact of a proposed pollution control facility. In their contrary argument, the plaintiff municipalities point to section 39.2(a) of the Act, which sets forth exclusive siting requirements that local units of government must consider in deciding whether to approve the siting of a pollution control facility. However, Cook County is specifically exempted from this and all other siting provisions of section 39.2 by section 39.2(h) (415 ILCS 5/39.2(h) (West 1992) ([n]othing in this Section shall apply to any    new    pollution control facility located within an unincorporated area of any county having a population of over 3,000,000)). Thus, while nothing precludes the Cook County board from considering the section 39.2(a) siting factors, all the Act requires the board to consider is whether, in its judgment, the waste facility should be placed on the proposed site. (415 ILCS 5/39(c) (West 1992).) This the Cook County board did. That the Cook County board further chose to rely upon the Agency's environmental expertise in conditioning its final PUD permit on Agency approval is in no way an abdication or delegation of its duty under section 39(c), which does not require that Cook County consider such matters in the first place. Thus, we conclude that the circuit court was correct in dismissing count III of the complaint to the extent it was premised upon any section 39(c) abdication-of-duty theory.