By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
On February 9th, the Tucker County Landfill was inspected by the DEP, according to Tucker County Solid Waste Authority Presiding Chair Mark Holstine. The announcement came as part of Holstine’s Director’s Report to the Authority Board February 24th. In the announcement, Holstine said that he did not anticipate a favorable outcome from the inspection and had requested a meeting with the Head of Enforcement to discuss the matter further and dispute the finding of the inspector. “February 9th DEP Inspector showed up onsite and we haven’t gotten a report,” Holstine said. “I’m not going to say what the report is going to say.”
According to Holstine, from what staff that was present informed him, he did not anticipate a good outcome from the inspection. “However, just the questioning that occurred and the stuff that he was talking about, I’m not anticipating a good inspection report,” Holstine said.
Holstine said he had requested a meeting with the Head of Enforcement and the Deputy Cabinet Secretary to discuss and dispute the findings of the inspection. The meeting was set for February 26th in Charleston, according to Holstine. “Its to the point that I’ve asked to have a meeting with the Head of Enforcement this Wednesday, asked that the Deputy Cabinet Secretary be present. I’ve asked Jody to come Wednesday to Charleston,” Holstine said. “We’re going to have to have a conversation.”
Holstine said that the inspector showed up during the inclement winter weather that Tucker County had seen following the snow and rain in January. Holstine also said that his two key employees were out with the flu the day the inspector showed up and staff on hand did not know where requested paperwork was kept. “He showed up in the middle of one of the worst winters since I’ve been here,” Holstine said. “It just so happened that Jody (Alderman) was down with the flu, LouAnn was down with the flu so we didn’t have access…to get all the written reports and stuff he was asking for.”
Holstine said the state of the landfill has existed for over 20 years and is due to the engineering of the original site, a situation that the current administration can do little to remedy, but has been working diligently to mitigate and manage. “We, the State, nor Jody designed this operation from an engineering standpoint,” Holstine said. “We didn’t build it, we didn’t permit it, we didn’t approve it. So the situations that exist on the ground have existed for 20 plus years. We’ve done nothing since I’ve been here done nothing but try to improve that, make it better, try to resolve the issues as they exist.”
Holstine said that the inspector commented on the issue of windblown trash on the site, an ongoing issue. “One of the recurring issues that you are always going to have here is windblown trash,” Holstine said. “I would say that 80% of windblown trash is retained inside our fencing. However, that’s considered windblown trash to an inspector because its off the lined area. So that is a recurring theme with the inspection.”
According to Holstine, there are some days that the site sees 70 mile per hour winds and windblown trash is unavoidable, but fencing surrounding the site catches any trash that gets away. “Some of the days we’ve had up there with the wind blowing you can’t prevent when a truck is unloading and the wind is blowing 70 miles per hour, its going to blow,” Holstine said. “The trash bags are going to blow. We’ve got a 20 foot fence up there to try to catch it all.”
Holstine also discussed the issue of leachate that was mentioned by the inspector. Leachate was a contributing factor in the supersedure five years ago of the site, according to Holstine. “The other big one that is a problem is leachate,” Holstine said. “Leachate is a big problem here. That problem has existed since we superseded. It led to the supersedure. Not only was there money mismanaged, but the money they were spending to handle their leachate was extreme. There was an excess of 6 and $700,000 a year prior to us taking over.”
Holstine said his board has been trying to mitigate the leachate in a variety of ways. There have been treatment expenses, hauling expenses and the introduction of ecomisters to the site to evaporate the leachate in the ponds and reduce the amount of leachate that needs to be trucked from the site to try to reduce the overall cost of treatment. “They were successful in doing so,” Holstine said. “However they are very hard to contain. The mist is very hard to contain in the fence of the pond. That has been a burning issue with our inspector since about a year ago and had it come up again the other day at his inspection.”
Holstine said due to the wet conditions from snow and rain this winter, the landfill has had to haul an excessive amount of leachate. “We have had to haul or will have to haul nearly one million gallons of leachate this month,” Holstine said. “We’re going to exceed all budget numbers. That’s the amount of rain and snow we’ve had . Jody at one time had eight foot snow drifts on the site and then it rained and then it got some more snow. Its just wet.”
Due to the wet conditions, Holstine said that leachate has been seeping onto the surface of the landfill. “Seeps are a problem,” Holstine said. “Leachate is hard to contain inside the field due to the fact that the landfill is full of water. We’re trying to alleviate that as best we can and manage it.”
Holstine said that due to excessive amounts of leachate, there is nowhere to put most of the seepage, so landfill staff have been managing the amounts to avoid spillage from the ponds and storage tank. “So we can’t just drain it because we don’t have anywhere to put it,” Holstine said. “So our goal has always been to prevent spill. No matter what we have to do onsite, we do not want our leachate ponds to over top. We do not want our leachate tank to over top because it becomes uncontrollable.”
The wet winter has left the ponds at their maximum level, Holstine said, with staff left to manage the levels. “With all the rain, all the snow we’ve had this winter, our ponds are at their maximum level,” Holstine said. “With that, we have to manage what we’re doing.”
Landfill Supervisor Jody Alderman had been in charge of managing the levels of the ponds to avoid spillage, according to Holstine. Holstine said that the process, however, unavoidably causes seeps to form on the surface of the landfill that can drain into the storm water pond and dilute. “Jody does that and manages us not over topping our ponds by managing the amount of leachate that we allow to go to the ponds and into the tank,” Holstine said. “When you do that, you pop seeps out on the face of the field and those seeps run out onto the ground, run off the lined area and find their way into your storm water pond. Luckily, that becomes somewhat diluted when it hits storm water.”
Another issue that the inspector found during the inspection, Holstine said was the enlargement of a storm water pond on the site, Holstine said. The inspector, according to Holstine, found fault with the amount of disturbed ground at the site. “Our storm water pond above Pond Two is not big enough, we’ve known that for years,” Holstine said. “We are now…in the midst of enlarging that pond. Which, he also got at because he said we had too much disturbed ground and our pond isn’t big enough to handle it.”
Holstine said that was the issue that forced him to request a meeting with superiors. “So that is the thing that kind of set me off and requested a meeting with enforcement,” Holstine said. “How do I make it bigger if I don’t disturb the ground around it?”
Holstine said the facility had also been approved for another storm water pond. “We’ve also just been approved for the other storm water pond I want to build…20 acres of disturbed land that’s never had a pond around it for the life of this facility,” Holstine said.
Holstine questioned why the negative inspections are happening now when he said the facility was never inspected prior to supersedure when it was in disrepair. “Never been an issue before. My problem is, all these things existed before we ever superseded,” Holstine said. “We’re trying to fix them and we’re getting hammered for trying to fix them and at the same time was never written up by DEP prior to supersedure. So my concern is, what is the purpose? Where are we going with this? What’s the end game? What’s the agenda?”
Holstine said that he has had customers and others in the landfill industry complement him on the state of his facility. Holstine also attributed the inspections to a miscommunication about the goals of the site. “Every customer has complimented us on the condition of the facility,” Holstine said. “I’ve had other landfill operating private companies look at our facility and say, ‘Wow, this looks pretty good.’ So there is a misconnection or miscommunication somewhere on what the goals are supposed to be.”
Holstine said he fully expected to find the facility in shambles when he arrived for the meeting after hearing the comments made by the inspector, but arrived to find the facility in normal working conditions. Holstine also said he had taken photographs of the facility to show at his meeting on the following Wednesday as evidence that his facility had not issues and the inspector was be unreasonable in his assessment of the site. “After hearing the comments made during the inspection…I fully expected it to be a mess when I got here today just from listening to what was said,” Holstine said. “It is nowhere near what I thought I was going to see. I saw exactly what I thought under normal conditions you would see. Extreme on the inspection side. There’s no issues.”
