School officials in Bath, Ill., are negotiating with the state attorney general’s office in an effort to avoid a lawsuit over a district high school’s 65-year practice of dumping raw sewage into a branch of the Illinois River.
In July, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency recommended that the attorney general’s office take legal action against the Balyki Community School District.
The agency had tried unsuccessfully to persuade school officials to install a pollution-control system at Balyki High School.
District officials said last week that they had declined to install such a system because they were trying to close the school permanently through a consolidation plan.