Let's Clean Up Our Landfills

[irishbobcat]

Tuesday, January 4, 2011  02:54 AM
By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

GOING GREEN
Read more stories about conservation and the environment at Dispatch.com/green.
Debris landfills offer a cheap way to bury the millions of tons of splintered lumber, crushed drywall and cracked masonry created each year at Ohio construction and demolition sites.
Draft rules proposed yesterday by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency could take "cheap" out of the equation, making new debris landfills install plastic liners and monitor wells to help protect groundwater from pollution.
Landfill owners also would be required to regularly check their dumps for odor problems and signs of underground fires.
The rules follow a 2009 Ohio EPA study that found toxic metals and compounds, including arsenic, benzene and vinyl chloride, percolating through the water at the 30 debris landfills tested.
"We found that there are contaminants in the (water) that would represent a threat or a concern to groundwater quality," said Dan Harris, chief technical adviser for the EPA's solid- and infectious-waste management division.
Michael Cyphert, legal counsel for the Construction and Demolition Association of Ohio, which represents the state's 55 licensed debris landfills, said the rules are unnecessary and will make new landfills too expensive to operate.
"If you have to spend literally millions of dollars to put in these liner systems, you might as well put in a municipal solid waste" landfill, Cyphert said. "There is no scientific justification for doing that."
Debris landfills were unregulated for decades because the old lumber, masonry and concrete dumped in them were deemed harmless.
Problems arose after several landfills started taking millions of tons of debris from waste haulers as far away as New Jersey and New York. One site, Warren Recycling in Trumbull County, became notorious for underground fires and clouds of noxious hydrogen-sulfide gas. That landfill closed in 2004.The EPA proposed similar rules in 2006, but it withdrew them after landfill companies argued that the rules were too expensive and unnecessary.
Cyphert said the EPA hasn't shown that any of the detected contaminants have leaked or are polluting groundwater.
Richard Sahli, an environmental attorney and longtime critic of the state's landfill policies, said the report shows stricter oversight of debris landfills is necessary. "The sample results clearly demonstrate the need for advanced controls," Sahli said.
The agency will accept comments on the proposal until April 1. That's the first step in a process that will require a final set of proposed rules that could become law in months.