Residents outline landfill concerns

By RAYMOND L. SMITH Tribune Chronicle – December 7, 2007
CHAMPION — Area residents expressed a variety of concerns about the Lafarge Landfill in Lordstown and landfills planned for Hubbard and Girard during a nearly two-hour community forum Thursday night at Kent State University Trumbull Campus.

State Sen. Capri Cafaro, D-Hubbard, led the discussion of several dozen community residents and activists.

Rick Hernandez, a Hubbard resident and a member of Regional Environmental Alliance for Community Health (REACH), said he believes landfills are affecting the health of people living around them by polluting both the water tables and the air and they are affecting the value of their properties.

‘‘When you go to the bank to draw on the equity of your home, you might find out your equity is nothing if you live near a landfill,’’ he said.

But addressing air pollution complaints about the Lafarge landfill in Lordstown, Kevin Francis, a registered sanitarian with the Trumbull County Board of Health, said the department has conducted 3,000 air quality tests in a six-month period and has found no ‘‘smoking gun’’ that shows the landfill is creating hydrogen sulfide.

Questioned about the growth of the Lafarge plant, a company representative said the company is looking to expand the facility. The company is licensed to operate on 123 of the 300-plus acres it owns.

Kurt Princic, an environmental manager of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, told the group that the state is working to develop the rules that will be used to enforce legislation designed to strengthen construction and demolition debris laws and make it more expensive for companies outside of Ohio to ship their garbage to Ohio. The legislation is being developed in House Bill 397.

‘‘With no rules, HB 397 has no teeth,’’ Princic said. ‘‘There is nothing to enforce.’’

Princic said that when landfills close, the operators are responsible to make sure no leachate pollutes the area water tables for five years.

Currently, the companies are required to place at least two feet of good soil over the landfill and plant vegetation on top of it. The proposed legislation would require landfill owners to place 3 to 5 feet of soil on top of the landfills. Liners will have to be placed on the landfills to make sure water do not get into the demolition materials, creating leachate that will pollute area water tables.

Lillian Breedlove, a member of Girard United Against Ruinous Dumps (GUARD), cited a study that says Ohio has one of the highest levels of water pollution in the nation. Breedlove suggested the pollution has contributed to the area having a higher than normal incidents of cancer.

‘‘God did not make water toxic,’’ Breedlove said. ‘‘Something was placed in it to make it bad.’’
Hernandez said, ‘‘the way our tipping fees are structured makes it advantageous for companies outside of the state to dump their commercial construction and demolition debris in Ohio.’’

Bob Villers, a spokesman with the Geauga Trumbull Solid Waste District, said a way to prevent construction debris from coming into the state is to have them identify it as solid waste.

Trumbull county receives a higher percentage of landfill material than other areas of the state because it is on the Pennsylvania border and has a better than average rail system, he said.

REACH member Sally Shubert Hall said the state should not allow landfills to use slag from steel mills as liners, because the slag is filled with heavy metals creating a different pollution problem.

Commissioner Frank Fuda told the audience that one way to stop landfills from moving into communities is by zoning.

rsmith@tribune-chronicle.com