A consensus was reached Wednesday between the DeKalb County Landfill owner and the county on recommended amendments to the site’s application for expansion, but several neighboring residents are still less than pleased.

After several changes were made, landfill owner Rodney Engstrom agreed to accept the county’s proposal outlining 23 conditions recommended for the county board’s approval of the application for both the vertical and horizontal expansion of the landfill.

Engstrom seeks permission to expand the existing 38-acre landfill site, located on Somonauk Road near Interstate 88 in Cortland, with the creation of a 26-acre horizontal expansion to the west and a 45-foot vertical increase for both the new and current sites. The existing landfill is expected to be filled to capacity by summer, Engstrom said.

Walter Reilly, 512 N. Somonauk Rd., said that with the horizontal expansion of the landfill, the new site will end about 200 feet from his property line. Neither he nor his wife, Meg, were informed of the proposed expansion of the site when they purchased their home last May.

“Our general well-being will be directly affected by the expansion. The smell, traffic and noise will all be nuisances on an everyday basis,” he said.

One of the conditions in the proposal prepared by the county’s consultant, Gerald DeMers, an environmental engineer from Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc. in Milwaukee, was that $10 million worth of Environmental Impairment Liability Insurance be purchased annually. An alternative to EIL insurance could be “to establish a separate pollution liability trust fund … with a 20-cent-per-cubic-yard payment for all waste taken persuant to expansion,” the proposal states.

During the first hearing on March 1, DeMers said he could approve the horizontal site expansion, but expressed reservations about recommending the landfill’s vertical expansion because of a lack of evidence verifying the existence of a leachate collection system and adequate liner for the current site.

Leachate is rainwater that picks up contaminants from the site’s garbage as it percolates through the landfill, and a liner is used to separate the waste from the soil to prevent waste leakage.

However, during Wednesday’s sixth and final hearing, DeMers said that during a tour of the site provided by Engstrom, he had seen the collection system. In addition, recent groundwater monitoring samples from the site indicate “a liner is active at the site,” and all criteria to “protect the public’s health, safety and welfare will be met,” DeMers said.

Rodger Steimel, 811 N. Somonauk Rd., said he is very disappointed the county’s consultant decided to recommend the vertical expansion on the existing site.

“We’re not asking for an application for a landfill. We’re asking for an application to build a mountain of garbage … something we can watch the sun come up over every morning,” he said.

Written comments from the public may be submitted to the county’s landfill hearing committee for review within 30 days of the completion of the hearing, as required by law.