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WHAT TO DO FOR HALLOWEEN A variety of scary and silly events are on tap in DeKalb County / C1 HIGH
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Demolition underway at park 67 of 121 homes in Evergreen Village now vacant By JESSI HAISH jhaish@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – DeKalb County officials recently bought all of the homes in the Evergreen Village Mobile Home Park and now are focusing on helping residents move out by the end of the year. Paul Miller, county planning, zoning and building director, said 67
of the 121 homes are now vacant, and demolition of the units has begun. After years of planning, county leaders have secured $7.1 million in state and federal emergency management grants to buy the flood-prone property at 955 E. State St., relocate its residents, and return it to open space by June 30. Officials have budgeted about $3.7 million to relocate residents and
about $1.9 million to purchase the mobile homes. The county bought the property from the previous owner for $1.47 million. “The crucial part of it is the emphasis remains on relocating and finding new dwellings for residents,” Miller said. Miller said once a home is bought by the county, the residents sign an agreement to leave within 60 days,
but some extensions have been granted as people are dealing with mortgages and varying move-in dates for their new places. County Board chairman Jeff Metzger is hopeful residents will be in new homes by the end of the year, and said he wanted to thank Miller and staff for putting in extra effort with Evergreen Village. “It’s been a huge project with a great deal of little bumps in the road,” Metzger said. “[Miller] has done a great job with a small staff.”
Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Mom Katie Bryant answers a question Wednesday after a density science experiment with her sons Wyatt Bryant (left), 9, Mason Bryant (center), 7, and Levi Bryant (right), 4, during science class in their Cortland home. Bryant decided to homeschool her three youngest sons after 60 students and staff at Cortland Elementary School were sickened Jan. 14 by a landfill odor when the odor infiltrated the school’s ventilation system.
Cortland residents blame nearby landfill for smell in complaints CORTLAND – A rotten-egg odor usually crawls up and burns Lisa Williams’ nose when she is driving three of her children to Cortland Elementary School. Sometimes she smells it again in the evenings, closer to 8 p.m. The odor can be so strong that Williams’ 9-year-old son gets pounding headaches, while her asthmatic 8-year-old son increased his medication dosage this summer, Williams said. Williams said the culprit can only be the DeKalb County landfill. “It smells horrible, and we know the difference,” she said. “That smell is very distinct.” Some Cortland residents have reported that the area near the landfill, 18370 Somonauk
She is second Dallas hospital worker to contract Ebola The Associated Press
ODOR OBJECTIONS
By ANDREA AZZO
Nurse’s actions raising concerns By EMILY SCHMALL and NOMAAN MERCHANT
DeKALB COUNTY LANDFILL
aazzo@shawmedia.com
@dailychronicle
Road, Cortland, seems to smell worse since Waste Management began taking in more trash Aug. 1 in order to start the process sooner of saving money for the DeKalb County Jail expansion through a tipping fee. The county’s landfill host community agreement with Waste Management allows an additional 500 tons of trash a day to be collected on top of its previous rate of about 300 tons a day. Some residents have complained to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Waste Management recently settled a lawsuit that the Illinois Attorney General’s Office filed after about 60 students and staff at Cortland Elementary School were sickened Jan. 14 by a landfill odor when the odor infiltrated the school’s ventilation system.
Paying for trash pickup The cost DeKalb County residents pay for trash to be picked up from their homes depends on where they live. DeKalb residents pay a standard monthly rate of $19.16, DeKalb Public Works Director T.J. Moore said. Sycamore residents pay $18.52 a month, Sycamore City Manager Brian Gregory said. Cortland does not have a residential contract for service, so they must choose whether to have their trash picked up by either Waste Management or Northern Illinois Disposal, where rates vary. Cortland resident Katie Bryant said she pays Northern Illinois Disposal $55 every three months, or about $18.33 a month.
See LANDFILL, page A6
DALLAS – The Ebola crisis in the U.S. took another alarming turn Wednesday with word that a second Dallas nurse caught the disease from a patient and flew across the Midwest aboard an airliner the day before she fell ill, even though government guidelines should have kept her off the plane. Amid growing concern, President Barack Obama canceled a campaign trip to address the outbreak and vowed that his administration would respond in a “much more aggressive way” to Ebola cases in the United States. Though it was not clear how the nurse contracted the virus, the case Voice represented just the your latest instance in which the disease opinion that has ravaged How conone of the poorest corners of the earth cerned are – West Africa – also you about managed to find the spread weak spots in one of the Ebola of the world’s most virus? Vote advanced medical online at systems. DailyThe second nurse Chronicle. was identified as com. 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson. Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Thomas Eric Duncan’s family showed she inserted catheters, drew blood and dealt with Duncan’s body fluids. Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia, died Oct. 8. Kent State University in Ohio, where three of Vinson’s relatives work, confirmed she was the latest patient. Even though the nurse did not report having a fever until Tuesday, the day after she returned home, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she should not have boarded a commercial flight. The nurse also knew before heading home that another nurse, Nina Pham, had been diagnosed with Ebola, and she had a slightly elevated temperature – 99.5 degrees, according to government officials. While in Cleveland, she was contacted by health officials and told that her health would need to be more closely monitored for Ebola, the CDC said. Agency spokesman David Daigle said Wednesday evening that Vinson spoke to a CDC official before she boarded
See EBOLA, page A6
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