Nicor Cleanup Has Begun, Expects Trucks

If you noticed some heavy duty trucks travelling around the Skokie area yesterday you'd better get used to it. For the next two years, Nicor Gas will begin cleaning a contaminated site near Oakton Street and McCormick Boulevard. Cleanup started yesterday.

Here's what you need to know:

• Trucks leaving the site with contaminated soil will head north on McCormick Boulevard and then west onto Dempster Street where they will get onto 94-East.
• Trucks that are completely empty will head south on McCormick Boulevard and then east onto Devon Avenue. They will then take Cicero Avenue to Peterson Avenue where they will get onto 94-East.
• And finally, trucks entering the site with clean soil will arrive from the south from Cicero Avenue to Oakton Street and McCormick Boulevard.
• The original route called for an estimated 24 trucks to drive up and down Touhy Avenue in Lincolnwood every hour, eight hours a day for about two years. That comes out to 192 trucks travelling down Touhy Avenue a day or 4,032 truck for the estimated 21 months it would take to complete the project.

Once the cleanup is finished, the contaminated land - which is adjacent to the Skokie Sports Park on Oakton Street - will soon turn into a massive sports field, with three lighted baseball diamonds, a soccer field and possibly even a place to play cricket.

While Skokie will get to use the land for their multipurpose sports filed, the property itself is owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. The Skokie Park District pays the MWRD a small fee to lease the land.

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