Contact

Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society - Contact Us

Protecting the Nation's First State Dedicated Nature Preserve

Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society

Paul A. Kakuris, President
P.O. Box 466 Zion, IL 60099
Phone Number: 312 332-3377
FAX Number: 312 332-3379
ildunesland@aol.com

There are many ways Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society can be of assistance to you and your neighbors. If you are a community group, concerned citizens, legislators, or public officials who would like to meet with our president, Paul Kakuris, and our asbestos health and safety expert, Jeffery Camplin, please contact us.

Jeff Camplin and Paul Kakuris would be glad to make a PowerPoint presentation and explain the risk issues involved with the asbestos contamination on all of Lake Michigan’s Illinois shoreline. They have worked very hard to make a difference for our environment and the health and safety of the public.

Paul A. Kakuris is Dunesland’s president and the driving force behind Dunesland’s efforts to preserve and protect the Illinois shoreline and correct the asbestos and other contamination on the Lake Michigan shoreline and at Illinois Beach State Park. He has been a dedicated Dunesland volunteer for more than a decade.

Mr. Kakuris has been an environmental professional and a coastal consultant since 1974. He specializes in coastal environmental issues including coastal processes. Paul is the co-inventor of shore protection designs that simulate a coral reef action in the near-shore coastal environment and the inventor of military personnel protection devices.

Mr. Kakuris has consulted on a variety of national and international coastal zones and in saltwater and freshwater environments. He is committed to “soft shore” design solutions for erosion control that harmonize with nature’s processes, rather than “hard shore” solutions that repel nature’s forces and can cause more environmental damage.

Mr. Kakuris has been instrumental in facilitating legislation for one of the first environmental plans for shore protection in the Pacific Rim, working with a country’s Parliament to create solutions for protecting some of the fragile and vulnerable atolls and islands in the South Pacific.

Jeffery C. Camplin, CSP, CPEA, is an environmental/health and safety engineer and has served as a volunteer consultant for the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society since 2002. He is active in the American Society of Safety Engineers, serving a second term as the administrator of their 2,000 member Environmental Practice Specialty. In 2005, Jeff received the Society’s Outstanding Volunteer Service Award.

Mr. Camplin is a nationally known asbestos expert and has authored many scientific papers. He is President of the Northern Illinois University Engineering and Technology Alumni Society.

Jeff authored Dunesland’s 2003 Camplin Report exposing the asbestos dangers on the Illinois shoreline. The release of that detailed report forced the creation of the Illinois Attorney General’s Asbestos Task Force Report. Mr. Camplin is a prolific author and is currently co-authoring a book entitled Asbestos Beach, Illinois’s Deadly Shoreline: Officials Corrupt Science and Steal Lives.

Are you Planning to Visit Illinois Beach State Park?

Directions to Illinois Beach State Park and Resort
All Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society meetings are held at the park resort unless otherwise noted.

Traveling by Train?
The Metra Line runs between Chicago and Milwaukee. You may access the schedule.

Traveling by Car?
Cick here for a map.

If you are going to the resort or park, the Zion stop is closest to the resort and Dunesland meetings. The Winthrop Harbor stop is right at North Point Marina and the North Unit/Camp Logan. The Waukegan stop is a little further, but here are always cabs waiting for the trains. If you get off at Zion or Winthrop Harbor, it would be prudent to arrange to have a cab meet you.

For help in planning your trip using public transportation, access the Regional Transit Authority Regional Travel Information Center.

Need Ground Transportation?

USA Taxi
I-Ride Transportation
Gibson Limo

847-746-5644
847-689-1050
847-746-6633

For campground
reservations, please go to the state reservations page.

Weather Forecast
For the ten day forecast, click here.

"We must handle the woods, the water, the grasses so that
we will hand them to our children and our children's children
in better and not worse shape than we got them."
President Theodore Roosevelt

Dead River in the Spring

Paul is the author of several published technical papers on coastal environmental issues and has presented them at conferences throughout the world.

Dead River in Winter Looking Toward Lake Michigan

Karen Jump is a professional development consultant and educator whose fifth grade students studied the environment and pollution in 1998. When articles in the Chicago SunTimes exposed the asbestos that had been found on the shoreline of Illinois Beach State Park, she invited the coastal expert quoted in the article, Paul Kakuris, to speak to her class.

The students sent letters to legislators and other elected officials, attempting to persuade them to clean up the shoreline. When many of the public officials responded to the students with evasive language and lack of content, the students were very disenchanted with the officials charged to protect them. They wrote more letters requesting that authorities clean up the contamination. They also created web pages for the school's web site. Some of their activities are detailed in a Charles Nicodemus Chicago SunTimes article on Earth Day, 1998.

Those students are now in college and Karen is still sending letters! She is a Dunesland board member, our Dunes News editor, and the editor of this web site. If you have any questions about information on our web site or would like to meet with Paul Kakuris and Jeff Camplin, please contact her at ildunesland@aol.com.

You may also contact Paul Kakuris at 312 332-3377.

aaaaaaaaaaaaiii