EPA receives landfill plan for fire safety
The Akron Beacon Journal
PIKE TWP - Placing a synthetic liner over a portion of a major landfill in southern Stark County is the best way to extinguish the underground fires there.
That's the conclusion of a 62-page fire-suppression plan submitted Friday to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and released Tuesday on the EPA's Web site.
The plan was prepared for Republic Waste Services of Ohio for its Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility, a 258-acre landfill in Pike Township that takes in about half of Summit County's trash. The company faced a Tuesday deadline to submit its fire plan to the state under a March 28 agreement.
The EPA, working with consultants, now must analyze the plan. Agency spokesman Mike Settles said it is not known how long that will take.
The agency does not intend to respond or comment on the company's proposal until final orders on dealing with the problem at Countywide are issued, he said.
The company is to meet with the EPA on June 19 to discuss the plan.
Capping, alternatives
The new plan, prepared by the Cincinnati office of SCS Engineers, calls for putting the liner over -- or capping -- 88 acres of the landfill. The capping could take three to six years to install.
The 88 acres are where aluminum wastes came into contact with liquids, triggering underground fires and causing odors that have plagued residents of southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas counties for months.
The capping would keep oxygen and liquids out of the landfill and is the best way to end the fires and odors, SCS Engineers said.
Although complete capping could take three to six years, SCS Engineers said, sections of the 88 acres, where the problems originated, might be capped this year and temporary capping -- something that has already been done in one area -- might be helpful in some places.
The company feels the problems are under control and the odors are declining, Countywide officials said.
No price tag has been attached to the company proposal, although the report calls the cost substantial, said Will Flower, a spokesman for Republic Services Inc., the Florida-based parent company.
The plan "very adequately addesses'' the points requested by the Ohio EPA and the company is "hopeful'' that the agency will approve the plan, he said.
Two alternatives to capping -- excavation and chemical injections -- were rejected by SCS Engineers.
Excavating the trash buried in the 88 acres would take at least 10 years and would be "prohibitively expensive,'' the company proposal said. It would require the removal of 13 million tons of trash, posing risks to workers and neighboring communities.
Chemical injections to extinguish the fire could be tried on a small scale, but as a large-scale answer, that option has "too many chemical unknowns and risks,'' the proposal said.
The decision as to what the company will have to do about the fire and odor problems rests with Ohio EPA Director Chris Korleski.
Landfill advice
The EPA will rely on advice from four outside experts: Vytenis Babrauskas of Fire Science and Technology Inc. of Issaquah, Wash.; Carl Heltzel, a chemistry expert with expertise in leachate and metal salts; Rick Thomas of Environmental Risk Management Consulting Corp. of Lexington, Ky.; and slope stability expert Timothy Stark of the University of Illinois. All four have visited the landfill.
The EPA also has consulted Tony Sperling of Sperling Hansen Associates in British Columbia; William Pitts of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Building and Fire Research Laboratory in Maryland; and Todd Thalhamer, a landfill fire expert with the California EPA.
Critics of Countywide said they didn't know whether the company's plan was the best way to proceed.
"Frankly, it's impossible for me to say whether that's the best option or not. I'm not a sanitary landfill engineer,'' said Tuscarawas County Commissoner Kerry Metzger. "We're going to have to trust in the (EPA) director.''
But getting the landfill's problems solved in a timely fashion is very important, Metzger said. "It's a huge, huge issue,'' he said. Taking up to six years for a final remedy is "just amazing.''
A spokesman for Club 3000, a Bolivar-based grass-roots group, said he was troubled by the plan.
Dick Harvey said it appears that the company wants the EPA to ignore the fires, which are a violation of state rules, and that's "totally wrong,'' he said. The company "just wants to cap it and let the fire go.''
Investigations
In January, the Beacon Journal reported that a growing fire was probably smoldering underground at Countywide. At that time, spokesmen for the company and the EPA said they felt problems at the landfill were being caused by a chemical reaction, and not a fire.
Thalhamer was hired by the EPA to investigate. He determined fires were smoldering underground, and that put the company in violation of its state permit.
Under the March 28 agreement with the EPA, Republic Waste Service agreed to pay a $1 million fine, with $250,000 being made available to community groups.
The company also forfeited some landfill space and was obligated to prove to the EPA that its synthetic liner under the landfill, its gas-extraction system and leachate collection system are intact and have not been damaged by high temperatures.
The Stark County Health Department has approved Countywide's 2007 operating permit.
The new fire-suppression plan is posted on www.epa.state.oh.us/pic/countywide.html.
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