There are some seriously polluted sites in McHenry County.

County government even has a way to explore them:

For information on specific groundwater contamination incidents, please click on the links below.

• McCullom Lake
• McHenry
• Port Barrington
• Spring Grove
• Arsenic in McHenry County
• Former Toastmaster Property – Algonquin
• Fox River Grove
• Crystal Lake
• Union
• Marengo
• Woodstock

Modine in Ringwood is probably the most well-known. As then-Northwest Herald reporter Kevin Craver pointed out, the McHenry County Health Department did not cover itself with glory in warning residents of McCullom Lake of the cancer risks accompanying the drinking of the well water it polluted.

There is Oak Manufacturing, which regularly dumped chemicals into the Crystal Lake sewer system that killed off the beasties at sewer plant. You can see the equipment trying to clean up the mess on the north side of East Crystal Lake Avenue just east of Downtown.

Now up for consideration before the McHenry County Board of Health on Wednesday September 23rd at 6:30 at the County Administrative Building is a request to allow the pollution caused by Arnold Engineering in Marengo to be remedied on the cheap.

The real estate and pollution problems seem to be now owned by 300 West LLC.

To put it in environment attorney Jeff Diver’s words in a memo to the McHenry County Health Department:

“The purpose of the requested groundwater use restriction ordinance is simply this: 300 West and Arnold, (the Defendants), want to avoid having to develop and implement a plan to cleanup the groundwater contamination which they caused and aggravated.”

As you can see below, Diver emphasizes what is in the paragraph above in his pro bono (written for no charge) memo to the McHenry County Health Department urging denial of the pollution site owner’s request.

I find it persuasive.

I hope the Board of Health does as well.

[The emphasis below is mine.]