On Jan. 13, 2009, more than 50 people crowded the fourth-floor meeting room of the Kankakee County Board. Dozens more crowded the hallway.

For more than 40 minutes, people for and against the 236-acre landfill in Otto Township backed by the city of Kankakee took turns voicing their opinions during the board's public comment period.

Some people in the audience cheered and some hissed in response.

And in the end, the board voted 23 to 2 to continue fighting the proposed landfill -- taking its fight to the Illinois Supreme Court.

"That, for me, was the turning point -- the key," recalled Darrell Bruck, president and co-founder of OUTRAGE, a government watchdog group that devoted nearly a decade fighting the proposal.

On Wednesday, one year later, the high court declined to hear an appeal by Town & Country Utilities Inc. to overturn the Appellate Court's decision to stop the landfill, effectively ending an eight-year legal battle.

Spreading the word

As news of the Supreme Court's decision made its way through the community Thursday, longtime opponents of the landfill celebrated -- while supporters of the plan lamented what might have been.

Larry O'Connor, who co-founded the group CRIME -- Concerned Citizens Interested in Maintaining the Environment -- and who has fought the proposed landfill since day one, wasn't quite ready Thursday to declare victory. "I will fully believe it when Mr. Volini says in the paper that he's folding his tent and leaving town," he said.

O'Connor was one of more than 100 residents -- many of whom waited outside the Kankakee City Council chambers in March 2002, when the first round of formal hearings on the proposal were being heard. Another was Charles Cooper, who lives across from the proposed site on 2000 West Road in Otto Township.

He expressed relief.

"This is great news," said Cooper, who attended dozens of hearings and other public meetings related to the landfill. "It's a long time coming."

But as long-standing opponents celebrated, supporters of the plan expressed frustration over a missed opportunity.

The city council pursued the project to provide a waste disposal option that is currently missing in the county -- and an estimated $24 million the city would receive in tipping fees in the first 10 years of the landfill's life.

"We perceived this project as an economic development initiative," said Steve Hunter, a 7th Ward Kankakee city alderman who supported the landfill. He said city taxpayers are the ones left holding the bag.

"You see what's happened in Bourbonnais," he said, referring to the recent $2 trash removal rate hike approved by the Bourbonnais Village Board. Currently, hauling city trash to landfills in Indiana and Pontiac costs nearly $2.8 million annually.

"The landfill has a lot of people passionate one way or another," Kankakee Mayor Nina Epstein said. But the county still doesn't have a waste management plan, she said, a point that still frustrates city officials.

Kankakee County Planning Director Mike Van Mill said an amended solid waste management plan may go before the regional planning commission as soon as next week. The plan calls for the county to investigate a new or expanded transfer station, as well as screening other county sites for a new landfill.

He said there will be opportunities for community input into the amended plan.

Working together

To be sure, landfill proposals have drawn resistance in the past. The fight over the city proposal spawned two formal opposition groups.

The first was CRIME; and then POWER (Protecting our Water, Environment and River), which remained active through a second attempt to site the landfill, and the numerous legal appeals that followed.

Bruck estimates he and other opponents attended more than 100 meetings planning its fight against the landfill over the past eight years.

"Not a week went by where we did not discuss and talk about what strategies to pursue," Bruck said.

And, if he had known how long it would take, Bruck said, he probably would have been "psyched out." But he added, "once you start something, you don't want to let go."