WEST CHICAGO
EPA’s thorium tests net 2 positive results
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tests for thorium contamination have revealed only a couple of positive results so far, officials said this week.
“The good news is that out of hundreds of readings, they’ve only found two that are just slightly elevated,” City Atty. Barbara Magel told the City Council on Monday.
The EPA has been retesting some areas of the city that may have leftover traces of thorium, a radioactive element, distributed in landscape materials that came from a now-closed industrial site.
Magel said it also was good news that the two elevated readings were found on properties owned by Tronox, formerly Kerr-McGee, which operated the manufacturing plant responsible for the contamination.
Officials are concerned that they have been unable to do preliminary surveys at nine of the 32 sites tabbed for retesting.
Officials said the two elevated readings may be due to pesticides or factors unrelated to thorium.
Residents are not in any danger, Magel said.
— Gary Gibula
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WHEATON
Panel OKd to plan city’s 150th-year fete
With the 150th anniversary of Wheaton’s incorporation approaching, the City Council this week approved a commission to coordinate a yearlong celebration.
Wheaton’s Sesquicentennial Commission is charged with creating events and excitement around the theme “Celebrate Wheaton: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” The city will give the commission $10,000 for seed money and initial expenses.
Wheaton was incorporated Feb. 24, 1859, about 20 years after brothers Warren and Jesse Wheaton helped settle the area.
Mayor Michael Gresk said the celebration will begin and end with this and next year’s 4th of July parades. He urged citizens to visit the city’s Web site to become involved in planning.
In other business, the city plans to chop down about 200 parkway ash trees this year to stem the spread of the destructive emerald ash borer.
Although Wheaton has not had an infestation, the borer has been sighted in nearby communities, City Manager Don Rose said at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
Wheaton has about 6,500 ashes among its 22,000 parkway trees, and 764 of them are in fair or poor condition, the city’s Forestry Division said. Wheaton will eventually remove those 764 trees as a preventive measure, Rose said.
The first trees to be removed will be on the city’s north side, nearest to Carol Stream and Glendale Heights, where the borer has been spotted.
— Clifford Ward
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BATAVIA
City awards $43,000 in improvement grants
The City Council has awarded six facade-improvement grants totaling more than $43,000 to businesses and groups in the downtown historic district.
The largest grant went to the Batavia Parks Foundation, a non-profit group associated with the Park District, to help fund construction of a $270,000 band shell attached to the Peg Bond recreation center in Island Park. The $15,000 grant brings the total amount raised for the project to about $90,000, with another $65,000 expected in Kane County riverboat revenue grants.
Bethany Lutheran Church, 328 W. Wilson St., got $10,000 to clean the north face of the building, which once housed Grace McWayne Elementary School. Other grant winners are Batavia Enterprises, which got $7,500 for new windows and siding at 206 Main St.; the Thomle Building at 4 E. Wilson St., which got $6,732 for painting and window repairs; Rendezvu Restaurant, 1 E. Wilson St., which got $1,994 for new signs and awnings on its north and south sides; and Riverside Commons, which got $1,938 for painting its storefronts at 2-8 W. Wilson St.
— Denise Linke
