Pollution from Girard Ohio Dump

This is a message from Richard Natoli:

GUARD, OHEJ, & REACH Members,
Attached above is a report sent to us by Teresa Mills of Buckeye Environmental. The "draft report" dated June 12, 2009 was done by the Ohio EPA and is an evaluation of leachate from Ohio's Construction and Demolition Debris Landfills (C&DD Landfills). Leachate water was sampled from 30 of Ohio's landfills (see location by county and list of names on page 12), and they included 3 landfills in Trumbull County:

1. Warren Recycling - Leavettsburg
2. TWL/LAS - Girard
3. Lordstown Construction Recovery - Lordstown

I will let you read it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions, but I can tell you that all I found was bad news. In particular, the bar charts on page 40, 55, and 63 all show that Warren Recycling and TWL/LAS are the two worst polluters of the 30 landfills studied:

Page 40 - Count of Parameters by C&DD Landfills that Exceeded Health Based Standards
Page 55 - Count of Parameters by C&DD Landfills that Exceeded Surface Water Quality Standards
Page 63 - Number of Parameters at each Ohio C&DD Landfill that Exceeded Health Based Standards, Surface Water Quality Standards, or Both



Recall that the Ohio EPA shut down Warren Recycling about 5 years ago, and afterwards the EPA did a "superfund cleanup" there. What does that comparison imply about the TWL / LAS C&DD Landfill located on the south side of Girard?

Teresa also mentioned that the Columbus Dispatch would be doing an article on the results of the EPA report. That article by Spencer Hunt is attached below.

Regards,
Richard Natoli (330) 545-4576
Secretary,
Girard United Against Ruinous Dumping (G.U.A.R.D.)
www.nomoredumps.org



Poisons found in debris landfills

EPA turned up pollutants in water at all 30 Ohio facilities it investigated

Monday, September 14, 2009 3:13 AM

By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Click here to enlarge

Ohio's 55 debris landfills offer a cheap, final resting place for the millions of tons of waste created at construction and demolition sites each year.

But there's a price.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency found a lot more than old concrete, bricks and lumber at 30 landfills it inspected. The EPA says arsenic, benzene and vinyl chloride -- all suspected carcinogens -- and lead, which can damage the brain and nervous system, all are found in the water trickling through the rubble.

The government's survey focused on landfills that have waste-collection systems, ponds or pumps that make it possible to draw water. The 25 other landfills do not.

At each of the surveyed landfills, including two in central Ohio, officials found as many as 29 pollutants at levels that exceed drinking-water health limits, pollution standards for streams, or both.

A draft of the study, released this summer, does not say that the landfills definitely pollute surrounding groundwater and streams. It focuses on water found within the debris itself.

"It poses a threat if it's released to groundwater or surface water," said Scott Heidenreich, an Ohio EPA solid-waste division manager and author of the study.

Michael Cyphert, legal counsel for the Construction and Demolition Association of Ohio, which represents debris landfills, disagrees. He said debris landfills are safe and that the EPA's study was intended to make them look dangerous.

"The EPA's conclusions, though deemed preliminary, are worthless and totally unscientific," Cyphert said.

Richard Sahli, an environmental lawyer and a critic of the state's landfill oversight, said he hopes the report will help revive an EPA plan to impose tougher pollution safeguards at debris landfills.

"The industry has always put out the claim that their waste is essentially inert," Sahli said. "This explodes that claim."

Debris landfills operate without plastic liners and extensive pollution monitoring and collection systems that are required at Ohio's 41 licensed municipal landfills. That's because EPA officials believed that debris wouldn't pollute.

Things changed in 2003 after federal officials declared a debris landfill in Warren Township in Trumbull County an "urgent health hazard." Water there reacted with gypsum wallboard to create toxic clouds of hydrogen sulfide gas.

Tougher regulations, first proposed in 2006, would require liners and more-frequent groundwater monitoring at new and expanded landfills. Plans to enact the regulations stalled after landfill operators said they were too expensive.

Ohio EPA Director Chris Korleski is to make a final decision on a set of compromise rules. Spokeswoman Melissa Fazekas wouldn't say when that would happen.

Tests at Frank Road Recycling Solutions in Grove City found levels of arsenic, antimony and thallium that exceed safe drinking-water limits.

At the Fallsburg Road debris landfill in Licking County, officials found arsenic, antimony, cadmium methylene chloride and pentachlorophenol that exceed drinking-water limits. Brian Mayfield, the Fallsburg Road sales manager, said monitoring wells haven't detected any groundwater contamination from the landfill.

Ken Pennington, Frank Road's operations manager, called his landfill "top-notch" and said the state's report is biased.

Cyphert said it is unfair to compare water found within the landfill against drinking water and surface water standards because pollutants get diluted by groundwater once they escape a landfill.

The point of the study was to determine if the waste within a debris landfill are harmless, Heidenreich said. "This raises our concern."

shunt@dispatch.com