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Do IT this week: Layering
After years of fire, fumes and foam, Countywide facility may have turned corner
By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Monday, Jul 06, 2009
PIKE TWP.: It's the $6 million valley.
Workers have excavated a 700-foot-long, 400-foot-wide trench through a pile of trash eight stories high in an effort to isolate and control odors and fires deep inside one of Ohio's largest landfills.
The Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility, which rises above Interstate 77 in Stark County, is where half of Summit County's garbage is dumped.
For the last 31/2 years, strong, noxious odors often have blanketed southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas counties.
Today, the smells have largely subsided, and the problems at the 258-acre landfill may have turned an important corner.
The valley, or firebreak, will keep fires and odors from spreading into newer areas of the landfill. The fires, triggered by buried aluminum wastes coming into contact with liquids, are now isolated for the first time to the landfill's original 88 acres.
Authorities are prepared to sit back, watch and monitor what's happening inside Countywide. The hope is that the chemical reaction will end, although no one can say if that will happen next week, next month, next year or several years from now.
''Our objective was simple: To isolate and to contain whatever's happening at Countywide,'' said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Paul Ruesch. ''There's nothing that we can realistically do to extinguish it or stop it. We are trying to keep oxygen and water out of the landfill and to contain the byproducts and odors.
''All we can do is step back back and watch it. And we will be watching for
the duration until it's done.''
What has happened at Countywide is getting increased attention because similar but smaller fires have been reported at landfills in at least four other states, and research will begin soon to determine how to best prevent and stop them.
Costly cleanup
The effort at Countywide has been expensive.
Florida-based Republic Services has spent $60 million so far and another $40 million has been set aside for future work.
Ruesch, from Chicago, took up residence in Stark County in September to supervise what has been dubbed Team Countywide, a group of more than 100 contractors, EPA staffers and Republic employees who are on task to stop the fires.
That effort included enlarging the landfill's gas-extraction system to control odors, removing large volumes of leachate or landfill liquids, and installing a synthetic liner over most of the 88 acres to keep liquids out and odors in.
Ruesch said he hopes to move back to Chicago this summer or early fall, although he will remain deeply involved in Countywide.
The company believes it was the victim of a ''perfect storm'' that created unforeseen problems, landfill manager Tim Vandersall said.
Countywide legally accepted about 600,000 tons of aluminum-process waste between 1993 and 2001.
Most of the waste is described as dross, or salt cake, a byproduct of melting aluminum with a salt waste.
When the dross comes in contact with water-based liquids, a chemical reaction generates heat and noxious odors.
In July 2001, Republic began to detect rising temperatures in landfill gas wells. Normal temperatures are 130 degrees or less, but fluctuations are common, and no one recognized that the gradual increases were warning signs.
In most cases, the increases were small: a few degrees each time, Ruesch said.
When that happened, the company was required to seek a waiver from the Canton Health Department, and that was repeatedly done.
''We didn't know what we were seeing was abnormal,'' Vandersall said. ''We thought it was just a series of localized problems . . . and we didn't see red flags.''
Questions at landfill
In April 2003, however, questions were being asked.
EPA records indicate that Republic Services' consultant, Khaled Mahmood of Michigan-based EMCON/OWT Inc., noted in a report to the Canton Health Department that higher-than-expected temperatures were coming from a well where aluminum waste had been buried.
But by then, Ruesch said, it may have been too late to minimize the problems.
By 2006, more than 100 landfill wells showed that temperatures were excessive, according to EPA records.
And by 2008, temperatures had risen to more than 270 degrees — well above the point at which water boils and a temperature that threatened landfill components like pumps and the synthetic liner.
The public didn't learn of the fires until August 2006 — although nearby residents began complaining of odors that spring.
In the interim, Republic installed more gas extraction wells, more flares to burn off gases, and a 30-acre synthetic cap.
As state and federal authorities increased their involvement, there was the October 2007 foaming incident that remains a mystery.
The photographs are startling: 3 to 4 feet of white foam resting atop a small stream that drains into Bear Run and Sandy Creek in southern Stark County. The foam fills the small stream from bank to bank.
Other photographs show the foam cascading down the sides of the landfill.
Republic Services initially said the foam was probably the result of a buildup of dried odor suppressants misted onto the landfill and then washing away in a heavy rain.
Later, the company reported that the foam was more likely the result of concentrated dish soap that had been dumped by the manufacturer years earlier.
Both may have contributed to the foam, says the U.S. and Ohio EPAs.
However, some in the Ohio EPA believe Republic was experimenting with a fire suppressant without approval.
Landfill general manager Vandersall said that's not true.
He said laboratory tests already had determined that foam suppressants weren't likely to work.
Kurt Princic of the Ohio EPA backed Republic on that issue. ''It was not firefighting foam,'' he said.
The source has never been determined, but Republic nonetheless was charged with polluting local streams.
Deliveries down
Countywide is divided into 16 cells, eight of which are closed. Cell 16 is taking trash and Cell 15 is under construction. The other six cells have not yet been built.
About 250 trucks arrive daily to deposit about 4,500 tons of trash. That's down from the 400 trucks and 6,000 tons a day when the economy was better, according to company spokesman Jeff Kraus.
The U.S. EPA, Ohio EPA and landfill owner Republic Services are completing a long-term management plan that spells out how the 88-acre landfill with its problems will be managed in the future. The company's landfill permits will be modified to conform to that plan.
Ruesch said Team Countywide is hopeful that the recent efforts are the reason for slight reductions in the amount of liquid flowing from the landfill and declines in temperature.
In 2008, Republic Services hauled out about 36 million gallons of leachate from the landfill.
From 1998 to 2006, Countywide recirculated its leachate through the buried trash. That is a fairly common technique for landfill companies and the action was approved by the Ohio EPA. It speeds up decomposition and creates more air space to dump more garbage, although it may have triggered the problems at Countywide.
In 2004, before the problems erupted, the landfill produced 3.1 million gallons of leachate.
The landfill's problems also triggered heavy settling of some areas of the landfill. Work is continuing on one area, called The Bowl, where the landfill has settled by up to 60 feet.
Additional synthetic capping is planned this summer on the last 18 acres of the original 88.
But the EPAs have no plans to extinguish the fires or dig into the 88 acres, Ruesch said.
Because the aluminum-waste issue now affects other landfills, the U.S. EPA will help sponsor research at an EPA laboratory in Cincinnati this summer in hopes of learning how the fires started and how they might be extinguished.
Similar but smaller fires have been reported recently at landfills in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, Ruesch said.
Partners involved in the $500,000 project include the National Solid Wastes Management Association, a trade group in Washington, D.C.; the Aluminum Association, a national industry group based in Arlington, Va.; and the states of Ohio and Indiana.
The project will involve the creation of mini-landfills in the lab in an effort to reproduce what is happening at Countywide.
Said Ruesch: ''We've learned a lot and I feel that we're on the right path. I'm confident and feel good about where we're at. Yes, there's still a risk, but what we've done and what we're doing poses the least risk to the surrounding community and the best chance of success. . . . We're not yet where we want to be but we're getting close.''
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
PIKE TWP.: It's the $6 million valley.
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Akron, Oh
Posted 08:56 AM, 07/06/2009
I would just like to compliment Bob Downing on a good job of reporting. It seems the ABJ has no good reporters on its staff, save Downing.
Independence, OH
Posted 09:34 AM, 07/06/2009
Bloody hell. This is just the democrats way of keeping us in Akron. We're not going to move south towards this monstrosity.
akron, oh
Posted 10:12 AM, 07/06/2009
who cares. if you want to live by a smelly landfill, that's your problem. it's like buying a house next to the expressway or train tracks (silver lake residents) then complaining about the noise and pollution. idiots.
Posted 10:27 AM, 07/06/2009
AkronLaw,
Another brilliant post, NOT!
What does this have to do with one political party or another? And couldn't we just move further south, like say Cambridge? Or towards Columbus?
Bolivar, Oh
Posted 11:00 AM, 07/06/2009
Like many people in Lawrence Twp and Pike Twp, we have lived here 30 years. We have fought against the landfill operation and WHAT WAS PUT IN THE LANDFILL for its 19 year life. Big money and EPA tipping fees plays the final hand. We would like Akron, and Cleveland to recycle their own, and deposit the rest in YOUR county landfill. This would solve 90% of our problems.TWO SIDES TO EACH FENCE.
Canton, OH
Posted 01:34 PM, 07/06/2009
That landfill is an eyesore . The odor emanating from it is nauseous. . .I feel for those who live around it. . .
Posted 01:38 PM, 07/06/2009
dduckster - be nice. My parents live close to this landfill and have lived there close to 30 years. My dad built their home and it is very special to our family. We didn't move in next to a landfill and then complain. They obviously have a right to complain as they were there long before this landfill existed or reeked so badly.
akron, oh
Posted 01:49 PM, 07/06/2009
skitchen
Posted 01:38 PM, 07/06/2009 dduckster - be nice. My parents live close to this landfill and have lived there close to 30 years. My dad built their home and it is very special to our family. We didn't move in next to a landfill and then complain. They obviously have a right to complain as they were there long before this landfill existed or reeked so badly.
point taken. i grow tired of hearing from people who move into a house near places like this, then all of sudden complain and stuff.
Berkeley, CA
Posted 03:38 PM, 07/06/2009
I want to commend the Beacon-Journal for its excellent comments page, where rational voices are now drowned out by anti-social cranks. Here in Northern California, we have come a considerable way forward. San Francisco avoids landfilling almost 70% of its discards, and is starting up mandatory disposal of green and food wastes for composting this fall. eventually, chronic resisters will get $100 fines. Norcal Waste Systems, the collector for City of San Francisco, owns no nearby landfill, so it hauls over 500,000 tons per year to Waste Management's (WM) Altamont Landfill about 65 miles east. Norcal's customers pay Alameda County $4.53 per ton, plowed back into recycling programs to conserve the landfill space. In addition, Alameda County voters passed a Recycling Initiative Charter Amendment in 1990 with a Recycling Surcharge of $7.92 per ton assessed on the wastes of its more than double San Francisco's population http://www.stopwaste.org/docs/measure-d.pdf. Finally, all users pay $1.25 per ton for wildlife habitat acquisition, recycling education and jobs training, and host community impact mitigation.
Berkeley, CA
Posted 03:39 PM, 07/06/2009
Oops.
I want to commend the Beacon-Journal for its excellent comments page, where rational voices are NOT drowned out by anti-social cranks.
