Blast from the Past - Banning Leaf Burning in Lisle

It was 1993... 

After Lisle Mayor Ronald Ghilardi counted the 16 letters and telephone calls he had received about leaf burning, and after he finished listening to 50 people testify on the subject at a hearing this week, he laughed.

"We don't have this many people show up on Election Day," Ghilardi said.

But on Election Day, residents don't get to discuss trees, which they did at a hearing Monday night before the Village Board on whether to ban leaf burning.

Trees are taken seriously in Lisle. 

Speakers at the hearing frequently reminded trustees that the town of 19,600 calls itself "The Arboretum Village," due to its location next to the Morton Arboretum.

Lisle is so thick with oaks and other trees that it allows people to burn leaf piles in their yards in April, May, October and November instead of bagging, mulching or composting them.

Only three other DuPage County towns, Oak Brook, Winfield and Wayne, still allow burning.

The proposal to outlaw open burning drew a standing-room only crowd to Village Hall and often pitted senior citizens against young parents with asthmatic children, longtime residents versus newcomers with allergies.

Debate was polite, but earnest.

Andrew Yender, a 74-year-old lifelong Lisle resident, objected to more restrictions.

"It seems like everytime I pick up the paper, you're trying to take something away," Yender told trustees.

To Yender and many of the longtime residents that live in the older sections of Lisle, burning the leaves that fall in their yards is the only way they can get rid of them. Bagging leaves on a typical expansive Lisle lawn is back-breaking work for senior citizens and also is expensive, since a yard waste bag sticker costs $1.19.

Besides, some old-timers argued, if the newer residents are allergic or asthmatic, they shouldn't have moved to a town like Lisle, which they knew allowed burning.

"I deeply resent the attitude of people coming here and instead of accepting it and loving it for what it is, they only love it for the way in which they can change it," said Patrick Cawiezel, whose family moved to Lisle in 1843.

But that image of a Lisle was countered by anti-burning partisans.

"It is not romantic; it is not homey," said Bob Schmidt of the Green Trails subdivision. "It's not a small problem. It's a big problem."

- Chicago Tribune Jan 27, 1993