EmeraldDolphin said:
let's see... they sing "Ants Marching" "One Sweet World" "Satellite" "Crash Into Me" ... there's more... but it was a band that we could all agree on around here... ages 15 to 53... but that was awful. My son informed me I'm out of the loop... it happened on Tues... he also said he heard that the fine may be $60,000. It's really just awful though!! UGH!!
Nope... did not happen on Tues... it happened on 8 AUG:
CREDIT Chicago Trib:
Cops show video in dumping case
Police say image pins down band
By Michael Hawthorne
Tribune staff reporter
August 26, 2004
Update: City officials today announced the formation of a task force that will inspect tour buses to make sure they aren't creating health or safety problems. The task force consists of inspectors from the Chicago Departments of the Environment, Consumer Services and Streets and Sanitation.
With a phalanx of detectives standing by and television cameras rolling, a curtain slowly parted Wednesday at police headquarters to reveal a fuzzy image of a long dark bus, projected on a giant screen.
A Chicago police commander then stepped forward to say the image proves that a tour bus for the Dave Matthews Band, a rock group known for its support of environmental causes, dumped a tankful of human waste onto a Chicago River sightseeing cruise.
Captured by a security camera at the East Bank Club, the time-stamped image shows a black and silver bus crossing the Kinzie Street bridge at 1:18 p.m. Aug. 8. Tourists on the architectural sightseeing cruise reported they were doused with a brownish-yellow liquid from a bus crossing the grated drawbridge around the same time.
The camera did not record the soaking. But the videotape shows that no other bus crossed the bridge for 15 minutes before or after, Belmont Area Cmdr. Michael Chasen said during the news conference.
"Clearly, this is the bus that discharged that fluid," Chasen said.
Police found the video during a two-week investigation that prompted Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to accuse the rock band and one of its drivers of violating state environmental and nuisance laws. The three-count civil complaint, filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks $70,000 in fines and an evaluation of the band's waste disposal practices.
Mayor Richard Daley said Wednesday that city officials also may file criminal charges, though the offense likely would be considered a misdemeanor.
"The action of illegally dumping in the Chicago River is absolutely unacceptable," said Daley, who nonetheless described the rock group as a "very good band."
Police were able to identify the bus shown in the health club's surveillance video by tracing a license plate number provided by a boat passenger, Chasen said. Soaked and angry, the passenger combed the area and found a luxury coach parked in front of the Peninsula Hotel, where the Dave Matthews Band was staying while playing two concerts at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wis.
A license plate check identified that bus as one of five leased by the rock group that were in town at the time, Chasen said. Later, the driver of another of the band's buses told police he had been driving from a Kinzie Street parking lot west of the river to pick up violinist Boyd Tinsley at the hotel around the time the waste cascaded onto the tour boat. The driver denied he was responsible for the incident, police said.
The state's lawsuit identifies the driver as Stefan A. Wohl, a Texas man who has worked for the Dave Matthews Band for at least the last three years. Pictures of the tour buses provided by the band showed that the one driven by Wohl resembled the one captured on videotape, police said.
The health club's security camera faces an iron gate leading to a walkway just east of the river, but it also records traffic passing on Kinzie Street.
John Vlautin, a band publicist, said the group stands by previous statements that none of its drivers was involved in the tour boat incident.
About two-thirds of the passengers on the upper deck of the tour boat were soaked with the foul-smelling muck. Some of the boat's 120 passengers suffered nausea and vomiting, and five went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for tests.
"This is about the most disgusting thing anybody can think of," Madigan said Wednesday. "It's the stuff of nightmares."
Daley and civic groups have been working for years to erase the river's image as a stagnant, sewage-choked waterway. Dumping anything into the river without a permit is a violation of state law.
The river is the cleanest it has been in years, according to a recent state study. But as more people are drawn to the concrete-lined channel, officials are mulling whether it should be subject to tougher pollution standards.
* Dave Matthews Band is a rock/pop group that plays mostly acoustic music. They're really good if you're in a mellow mood.