Contact Us

Paul A. Kakuris, President
P.O. Box 466 Zion, IL 60099
Phone Number: 312 371-9770
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.

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

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.

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 adults 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 312 371-9770.

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