Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990 TAG: 9003092226
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Monday, its consultants jumped ship.
Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed its lawsuit against state officials who threatened to shut it down.
Wednesday, its lawyers with the prestigious Richmond firm of Hunton & Williams resigned.
Thursday, the state resurrected a lawsuit that could close the private dump that's been bringing Northern garbage to Alleghany County since 1988.
All this has caused people like Rovena Whitfield, president of the anti-dump group Citizens for a Cleaner Environment, to speculate about the dump's life span.
"I'm looking for a bankruptcy and a pullout overnight," said Whitfield, who serves homecooked meals to Kim-Stan workers at Pappy's, her store at Low Moor.
Is that about to happen?
"No, not that I know of," Shelcy Mullins Jr., a Kim-Stan worker and son of one of the company's owners, said Thursday afternoon.
Judy Cottrell, one of the anti-dump group's faithful truck counters at the Kim-Stan gates, said about 95 tractor-trailers of garbage came in Thursday.
Jack McClard, one of Hunton & Williams' lawyers, confirmed that the firm resigned from the case on Wednesday, but he refused to say why. "It's confidential. I can't talk about it," he said.
"I'm sure us leaving didn't help any," said Tim Salopek, president of Waste Placement Professionals, the Ohio consulting firm that left the job in frustration on Monday. His team helped install state-ordered pollution controls and dealt with regulators pressuring the dump to clean up its act.
Salopek said he was fed up with everybody involved in the controversy - Kim-Stan, the dump's opponents, the news media and state officials.
One of his many gripes was that as part of its defense against state charges, he said, Kim-Stan asked his company to expose pollution at other Virginia landfills. Salopek said he balked. He's in the business of starting and improving landfills around the country, not shutting them down. "It was starting to get really dirty."
There's room in the landfill for Kim-Stan to take garbage at least six more months, according to Salopek.
Joe Roberts, a Wise County lawyer who Mullins said has always been one of Kim-Stan's attorneys, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Roberts also is the company's registered agent in Virginia.
Bert Rohrer, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, said that on Thursday Terry's office refiled a 1989 lawsuit in Alleghany County Circuit Court to close the dump unless it stops polluting.
A federal judge cleared the way for that suit to proceed when he dismissed Kim-Stan's federal suit on Tuesday. The company had claimed state officials violated its due-process rights in a two-week forced shutdown last summer.
State and federal agencies have been warning Kim-Stan to stop discharging polluted waters off the site for a decade. The 17-year-old dump took local trash until new owners began accepting garbage from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in September 1988.
David Bailey, director and attorney for the Virginia office of the Environmental Defense Fund, said Thursday that he hopes the state will squeeze all the money it can from Kim-Stan for the dump's eventual shutdown. Costly clean-up and environmental monitoring can continue for decades after a landfill is closed.
"I still expect the taxpayers will have to pick up a big chunk of the tab," Bailey said.
by CNB