Smelly sludge sewage fields and landfills aren't the usual stuff of sightseeing tours in a city that likes to show off its architecture and lakefront parks.
CHICAGO — Smelly sludge sewage fields and landfills aren't the usual stuff of sightseeing tours in a city that likes to show off its architecture and lakefront parks.
But people are paying $7 (euro5.70) to see some of Chicago's less desirable spots on a "Down in the Dumps" tour of more than a dozen garbage sites including a waste water treatment plant, recycling center and landfills.
The nearly three-hour bus tour of the far South Side -- where landfills rise up like rolling hills -- is a chance for residents, environmentalists and visitors to learn more about what happens to garbage once it leaves their trash cans.
"We see it, we smell and we wanted to know what all this is," said Bill Serckie, who took the tour on a recent weekend with his wife, Patty.
The couple has lived for 18 years near the garbage-filled landfills that dot the area near the Illinois-Indiana state line, but like many of the 30 other tour-goers had never seen them up close.
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"The tour makes you want to be more involved in the community and know what's going on," Serckie said.
The tour, conducted twice this summer, will be offered again in the fall. It's organized by the Southeast Environmental Task Force, a conservation group that wants to preserve open space and make sure more landfills don't sprout up.
"It's an area that was once a beautiful wetland and all that was trashed beginning in the 1940s and 1950s when it became a natural dump site," said Stan Komperda, a project manager for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Most of the landfills on the tour no longer accept garbage because of a city moratorium that took effect in 1984, said the group's president and tour guide Tom Shepherd.
Two of the dormant landfills are among the highlights of the tour. One is a grazing area for 64 goats and the other has been turned into a golf course.
The goats are helping to turn the methane-producing, 170-foot (52-meter) landfill into a wildlife habitat, Komperda said.
"We decided to give the goats a shot last year and they have been spectacular," he said. "The goats ignore prairie plants but eat the weeds, which lets the light in and helps the prairie plants."
Shepherd joked about how the landfills are often given tranquil monikers, including being named after lakes and prairies.
"These landfills are given these nice names to give you the image that if you've never seen one before you might think it's a nice place," Shepherd said.
Mild weather helped keep the smells to a minimum on the tour, but the odor coming from a water treatment plant drew a collective "Eeewwwww" from the tour-goers.
"You can usually smell it through the whole region but you don't usually get to see it," Shepherd said.
The plant treats water for the city and 124 nearby communities. Because of security measures after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, tour-goers couldn't go inside the plant.
Brian Rich of Chicago brought his 5-year-old son, Elliot, on the tour so he could start learning about environmental issues.
"We recycle at home and I care about the environment," Rich said. "But unfortunately, I think a lot of people are complacent about environmental issues."
Source: Associated Press
