Category: News

A community group wants the city of Springfield to take over the Pillsbury Mills Plant, tear it down and redevelop the site.

But, first, they want the city to make sure the area is closed off to trespassers.

“It’s a partially demolished old factory that has some level of asbestos contamination still on site. And so it’s dangerous for folks to go in there,” said Chris Richmond, the former fire marshal for Springfield who is leading Moving Pillsbury Forward. “But what we know at this point is that is happening on a regular basis.”

The group brought its concerns to the Nov. 26 city council meeting.

Mary Frances, also with Moving Pillsbury Forward, asked council members to act on six demands from the group, including allocating $20,000 in the next budget to secure the property.

“When are you going to take control and make this a win-win for yourself and the whole city?” she asked.

Read the full story at IllinoisTimes.com…

A community is fed up as the Old Pillsbury Mill Factory continues wreaking havoc on their neighborhood.

On Wednesday, a meeting took place in Springfield to find answers.

People who live in the Pillsbury Mill neighborhood said it’s been causing issues for about a multitude of years.

They even said it’s causing constant crime, trespassing and fly-dumping.

The issue with tearing down the building is due to asbestos throughout the building, which means the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency controls it.

The neighborhood association said it’s working with the city to find a solution

“Finally we’re hoping we can get it boarded up and cleaned up a little bit and put a new face on the neighborhood,” said John Keller, the Pillsbury Mill Neighborhood Association president.

During the meeting, community members voiced their concerns and frustrations over the situation.

Former City Fire Marshal Chris Richmond attended the meeting to give a history of the plant and answered all questions.

He said he’s working on creating a community task force dedicated at solving the problem.

Read the full story and watch the video clip at NewsChannel20.com…

A proposal for what to do with Springfield’s power plant could be announced in November. The plan would follow a report from the spring recommending the city shut down three of its four coal generators.

Springfield residents from wards 5 and 6 asked questions about crime, homelessness, the future of City Water, Light and Power, and Pillsbury Mills at a meeting Monday night.

Terry Young, with the Trevi Garden homeowners association, said he attended to ask what city officials are doing to address homelessness and what the plan is for the coal plant.

“It’s always been about the number of employees that’d be displaced [at the coal plant],” he said. “The sooner they can come up with a plan to put those employees in other jobs without displacing them, and allowing attrition and retirement to take care of the headcount – I think that would be a move in the right direction.”

CWLP Chief Engineer Doug Brown said because of environmental regulations that are set to take effect over the next few years, it’s not a matter of if they’ll shut down the coal generators, but when.

Read the full article at NPRIllinois.org…

A dog that appeared on the top of a northern section of towers of the abandoned Pillsbury Mills factory on the city’s north end has been in the sights of Sangamon County Animal Control for at least a month.

The yellow-colored mixed breed, which was sporting a collar and appeared to have recently given birth to a litter of puppies, was spotted on the tower and in a plant building connecting a southern tower on Monday.

Lt. Joe Phillips of the Springfield Police Department acknowledged that the department had been contacted Monday afternoon and responded to the scene. Phillips said he was in contact with Animal Control, which did not have authority to be on the property.

The dog in question had been spotted at various spots on the property in the past month and that Animal Control has tried to coax the dog off the property, Phillips said.

Read the full story at SJ-R.com…

Two people have been charged in connection with a suspected arson fire last year at the old Pillsbury Mills site in Springfield.

Read the full story at WMAY.com…

This February, we saw a federal judge crack down on the reckless and negligent handling of asbestos removal by a Pillsbury plant owner based in Springfield, Illinois. Joseph J. Chernis IV was sentenced to 3 years and 1 month in prison for the illegal removal of asbestos at his plant.

Placing the Public at Risk of Asbestos Exposure

Placing workers and the public in danger, Chernis first violated federal clean air regulations when he let untrained workers remove asbestos from a former Pillsbury mill. The asbestos was then stored in uncovered containers, along with plastic bags and cardboard boxes. When a different lawsuit was filed by the state of Illinois regarding these violations, Chernis allegedly lied about the removal and storage of asbestos at the mill. The presence of asbestos at the Pillsbury mill endangered not only the disposal workers but the community at large.

Springfield’s Fire Marshal Chris Richmond stated:

“The site has a significant past history, other than the ownership, of folks in the community breaking into or trespassing in that facility for a variety of purposes. In some cases, it’s been young folks, juveniles, curious about an old factory complex.”

Read the full article at MesotheliomaHope.com…

U.S. District Judge Sue E. Myerscough today ordered a Sherman, Ill., man, Joseph J. Chernis, IV, to serve 37 months in federal prison for failure to adequately remove and dispose of asbestos material, violations of the Clean Air Act, at the former Pillsbury Mills facility in Springfield. Following his prison term, Chernis, 35, was ordered to remain on supervised release for a period of three years. Chernis was ordered to self-report to prison when directed by the Bureau of Prisons. 

Read the full article at Justice.gov…

Pillsbury descends into Superfund status

Ann Ridgeway was on her porch when the crash came.

No one had told neighbors that a massive metal building was going to fall that day in October 2014. Towering more than 10 stories, the so-called dryer building – locals say artificial sweetener was once made there – produced plenty of dust and debris in its death throe.

“It looked like something was on fire,” Ridgeway recalls. Brian Dearco was repairing his roof a couple blocks away from Ridgeway’s home, directly across the street from the mill.

“As soon as the building came down, millions of mosquitoes and gnats came out,” Dearco says. “I broke out in a rash. My wife did, too. … You could smell it in the air after that building came down. It smelled like gas, so the fire department came.”

Responding to reports of a collapsed building, fire engines swarmed. But there was nothing to worry about, an owner of the site assured firefighters – he had a permit to demolish the building, according to fire marshal Chris Richmond. And so the fire engines left, and work resumed, with crews sorting through rubble to recover scrap.

There was, in fact, plenty to worry about.

Read the full article at IllinoisTimes.com…

November 2017 Update

This project has been completed.

U.S. EPA removed, transported, and disposed of asbestos-contaminated waste inside and outside of every building. The site has been turned over to Illinois EPA.

The cleanup, which lasted about nine months, involved removing waste materials after being separated into the following categories:

• Friable asbestos-containing construction debris
• Friable asbestos‐containing pipe wrap and boiler insulation materials
• Unknown drums
• Compressed gas cylinders
• Laboratory chemicals
• Universal wastes

The majority of the asbestos waste was loaded into lined trucks or dumpsters/roll-off containers. Any debris that was too large for transport was mechanically demolished prior to load and transport. Depending on the location, some waste (i.e., drummed and universal waste streams) was temporarily stockpiled inside an “outbuilding” prior to transport and disposal. Nearly 2,200 tons of contaminated debris, 1,160 cubic yards of contaminated pipe wrap and boiler insulation, nine 275-gallon totes of waste/fuel oil, three 55-gallon gallon drums of waste anti-freeze, 3,700 fluorescent light bulbs, and 12 pounds of mercury were removed and shipped off-site.

During the cleanup, U.S. EPA also took measures to keep any asbestos-contaminated dust from blowing off-site. The air was monitored to ensure the asbestos was under control. Security was provided around the clock to prevent trespassing.

Read the full report at EPA.gov…

Ten years ago this spring, a group of Springfield economic development planners, elected officials, real-estate specialists, environmentalists, residents and business owners gathered at Lanphier High School to consider the future of the Pillsbury Mills plant on the city’s northeast side.

Ideas included restaurants, hotels, mini-parks, residential development, bike trails, retail shops and state offices. Someone even floated the possibility of former grain silos as climbing towers.

Fast forward to last week and a federal indictment handed down against one of the property owners who is accused of improperly removing asbestos from the abandoned plant and later making false statements about it in a separate court case. The federal and state cases are likely to take months, if not longer, to resolve. Meanwhile, the 18-acre site at 1529 Phillips St. is in its 15th year since Cargill Corp. shut the facility down.

The spring 2006 meeting followed a 2005 “charrette” — a French term for short, intense planning sessions — to gather neighborhood suggestions for future use of the property. Funding was a question, too. The cost of knocking down the massive, blast-resistant silos alone, consultants said, could be prohibitive.

“I was there,” said John Keller, president of the Pillsbury Mills Neighborhood Association.

The ideas never went beyond planning sessions. But Keller said last week he remains hopeful that at least some of the plans pitched in 2006 could still be useful, once the court cases are settled.

“It’s hard to know right now which way it’s going to fall,” said Keller, though he added that he expected there would at least be a proper asbestos cleanup this time.

“It’s going to happen; we just don’t know when,” he said. “I think we’re going to hear more in the next couple of weeks.”

Read the full story at SJ-R.com…