Oregon officials and environmentalists are expecting plenty
of public support in their opposition to expansion of the hazardous waste
landfill in the city.
Doug Roberts, president of Envirosafe Services of
Ohio, Inc., had expected to submit a permit modification request to the Ohio
Environmental Protection Agency by the end of December, but he has postponed the
process.
Among the plans being considered by the company are increasing
the capacity of its active landfill cell south of York Street, commonly called
Cell M, or digging an entirely new landfill pit on an adjacent 50 acres the
company owns.
"We are not really sure when we are going to submit it, but
I do not think we’re making that determination by the end of the year," Mr.
Roberts said. "Obviously people are concerned about anything about Envirosafe,
but we are a valuable employer, and we are going to try and alleviate any
concerns."
At the current rate of waste disposal, Cell M will be full in
four to six years, Mr. Roberts said. Increasing its height by 70 feet would add
several more years to its use.
Oregon Mayor Marge Brown said the landfill
operator can expect strong opposition from the city.
"We said to them,
‘Don’t expect just to do what you want to do without a fight,’" Mayor Brown
said. "We are going to fight them because I have to protect the
citizens."
After making a permit modification request, legally required
public meetings would be held, which Mayor Brown said likely would attract
Envirosafe protesters.
Councilman James Seaman agreed.
"It doesn’t
make good sense to allow any kind of expansion," he said. "I’m concerned about
the shortcomings of the landfill and I’m concerned about the leakage and
contamination to the bottom layers of the soil and the aquifer."
Last
month, researchers from Michigan State University announced that dangerous
contaminants were leaking from the landfill. The Technical Outreach Services for
Communities program at Michigan State used three-dimensional renderings of the
landfill to show where synthetic and organic chemicals, along with heavy metals,
have moved downward from its older waste pits into the upper and lower tills -
the two layers of earth below the dump and above the
bedrock.
Concentrations of several chemicals were found in very high
levels in the upper till. The level of bis(2-Ethylhexyl)phthalate, which is used
in the production of polyvinyl chloride, was detected in the upper till at 9,800
times the maximum contamination level - the maximum permissible level of a
contaminant in water delivered to any user of a public system. High levels of
lead and cyanide, along with low levels of other heavy metals, were detected in
the lower till.
After the Michigan State group’s presentation, the Lucas
County Health Department began surveying 49 wells near the
landfill.
"When the TOSC report came out, we got really interested," said
Mike Oricko, director of environmental health for the Toledo-Lucas County Health
Department. "If there was a risk of contamination to the aquifer or the
groundwater, that’s what we would want to know about, but at this point in time
it doesn’t appear that there is any contamination."
Judy Junga, an East
Toledo resident who has campaigned against the dump for years, doesn’t think the
EPA should allow any expansion.
"They should have never put hazardous
waste near water lines and streams that run into Lake Erie," Mrs. Junga said.
"As soon as I read that they found contamination in that lower till, that got my
attention because over all these years, they said that there was no way those
contaminants would ever get into the lower till."
Contamination also was
found in very high levels near the facility’s boundary and close to the city of
Toledo’s water lines, which run between hazardous waste pits of the
landfill.
There is no evidence that contaminants have moved into the
bedrock aquifer, which could be a source of drinking water.
Envirosafe
bought the former Fondessy Enterprises landfill in 1983. Most of the waste
buried in the facility’s active cell is electric arc furnace dust from
air-pollution devices at steel mills.
Fondessy began burying waste at the
site in 1954. Many of the higher levels of contamination were detected in the
tills below waste pits that are no longer in use.
In 2000, Envirosafe was
ordered to begin testing the soil and groundwater in and around the dormant
Fondessy landfills. A second phase of the study into Envirosafe is expected to
be done in 2005 and will include more testing and a closer examination of five
of the landfill’s waste pits.
"We could construct a new landfill, which
would be a state-of-the-art landfill," Mr. Roberts said. "The other areas, the
old Fondessy landfills, are where we are doing all the investigating. We never
operated those but we had to take responsibility for them because we own the
property."
Lynn Ackerson, an Ohio EPA project manager, said the suspect
waste pits predate modern landfill regulations and lack leachate collection
systems or modern liners.
