Christmas came early for a half-dozen Lake County communities thanks to the Monsanto Co. More monetary rewards for them may be in the pipeline for next year’s holiday season.
Beach Park, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, North Chicago, Winthrop Harbor and Zion will share in some $80 million from a settlement with Monsanto and two affiliated firms, which was announced earlier this month by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Lawyers in the office originally sued Monsanto in 2022 over PCB contamination from selling nearly 50 million pounds of the highly toxic chemical in the Land of Lincoln from 1960 to the mid-1970s.
The suit against Monsanto, now a subsidiary of German-based global chemicals giant Bayer, alleged the firm’s PCB products were harmful to people and the environment despite company officials’ repeated denials. Use of the synthetic compound polychlorinated biphenyl has been banned nationwide since 1979.
The total settlement amount is $120 million, with the state receiving a minimum of $40 million outright, with a maximum of $200 million. The higher figure depends on the outcome of related legal actions by Monsanto, which has sued its PCB customers, Raoul said in a statement.
Also in line for a split of the windfall, which is to be determined later, are Chicago and the northern Cook County suburbs of Evanston, Glencoe and Winnetka. Under the agreement, Illinois will receive $80 million by March 31, 2026, which will be allocated to the state and the nine municipalities impacted by PCBs and involved in the settlement.
Some have wondered and questioned why Waukegan wasn’t included in this recent settlement, as were the other Lake Michigan shoreline communities. Especially considering that for decades tons of PCBs, linked to liver damage and various cancers, were dumped in the city’s harbor.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1981 said Waukegan Harbor had the highest known concentrations of uncontrolled PCBs in the nation. Those PCBs were a byproduct of the hydraulic fluid manufacturing process for recreational pleasure boat engines at the lakefront plants of Johnson Motors and its bankrupt parent, Outboard Marine Corp.
Waukegan was not included in the settlement announced Dec. 1 by Raoul because the city received a PCB payout in 2023. The city was one of dozens of municipalities and states involved in another class-action lawsuit settlement involving damages from Monsanto’s design and manufacture of PCBs.
That amount totaled more than $1.7 million from the PCB Settlement Fund/PCB TMDL Fund on April 17, 2023, according to a city spokesman. TMDL is an acronym for Total Maximum Daily Load, a formula the EPA sets for pollution reduction goals necessary to improve the quality of polluted waters.
At one time, St. Louis-based Monsanto was the nation’s leading manufacturer of chemical compounds, including some questionable products such as the avian-deadly insecticide DDT and the virulent herbicide Agent Orange, which was used with abandon during the Vietnam War. Company chemists even invented AstroTurf, used at sports stadiums.
Most of the PCBs used by Illinois companies in a range of products from paints to electrical equipment to lubricants were manufactured by Monsanto’s facility in downstate Sauget, along the Mississippi River near St. Louis.
Ironically, Sauget originally was incorporated as Monsanto in 1926, and the old plant remains a Superfund site. It is not one of the towns involved in the settlement despite the company allegedly dumping hazardous waste into the city’s sewer system, which eventually found its way into the Mississippi.
Some may remember the PCB scourge at Waukegan Harbor and the EPA recommending in the 1980s that fish caught there, mainly salmon and trout species, should not be eaten. Since then, federal and state-funded cleanup efforts have removed PCB-contaminated sediment from the harbor, an EPA Superfund site.
The cleanup began in 1993, when dredging at Waukegan Harbor removed sediment contaminated with PCBs. By 2014, after 30 years of remediation and spending $150 million, Waukegan Harbor pollution had dropped enough that EPA officials said it could be considered for removal from the list of the Great Lakes’ most-polluted areas of concern.
Monsanto manufactured PCBs from 1935 to 1977, and continues to pay for production of the dangerous chemical, which many thought was a benign substance. This recent legal settlement continues to hold the firm accountable for its product, which created a pollution hotspot in Waukegan and impacted other Lake County shoreline communities.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
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