Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 2, 1990 TAG: 9005020654
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In flagrant violation of state regulations, Kim-Stan has thrown an "enormous" amount of waste into a drainage ditch and removed instruments to monitor water pollution, Terry said.
She noted in papers filed in Alleghany County Circuit Court that the dump's operators have lost their insurance, "leaving Kim-Stan without proof of financial responsibility for the damage it does."
She complained also that operators have removed a manhole to catch polluted waters without setting up an alternative method.
"It seems that Kim-Stan has concluded that eventually the landfill will be shut down and has decided to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, without regard to the neighbors or the environment," Terry said in a news release.
A hearing is set for 10 a.m. May 10 before Alleghany Circuit Judge Duncan Byrd.
The state also may be on the verge of revoking Kim-Stan's license to operate the landfill.
In a report received Tuesday by Cynthia Bailey, director of the Department of Waste Management, a hearing officer said Bailey should pull the landfill's permit as soon as possible because of its pollution and lack of insurance.
Lewis Markel, who presided over a hearing March 30 on the state's accusations against Kim-Stan, said there was no excuse for the dump's violations of state law.
Markel said Kim-Stan offered little defense for its bad behavior. Furthermore, he said, the company failed to file its brief in the case until after he reached his decision, even though he personally alerted Kim-Stan that its papers were overdue.
Markel said he found the owners' conduct inexcusable. Public outrage about the dump and press attention should have led the company to "bend over backward" to obey the law, he said.
Bailey said she expects to make a decision on Kim-Stan's permit by the end of the week. Kim-Stan could appeal either closure or loss of its permit, but judges could require the landfill to suspend operation until appeals were heard.
Terry wants Byrd to make Kim-Stan stop all off-site leaks of leachate - the toxic liquids in landfills - and truck all leachate to proper treatment facilities. She asked that all trash be removed from ditches and that the company monitor surface and ground water on the site.
Veteran opponents of the dump applauded the state's actions but wondered why it took almost two years of pleas for the state to crack down on the dump, which is near Selma, just outside Clifton Forge.
"I think the state has taken longer than was required to see that Kim-Stan was only in it for the money," said Kevin Terrell, a leader of a county group that has long demanded a shutdown.
Hundreds of tractor-trailers bring garbage there each week from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Neighbors of the dump have complained through letters, phone calls, daily picketing and testimony at state agency meetings that the landfill was fouling their area.
State investigators repeatedly have cited incidents of polluted water spilling from the landfill into nearby streams and the Jackson River, a tributary of the James River.
The state closed the dump for two weeks last summer after a fish kill in a pond was blamed on landfill pollution. Kim-Stan resumed business after a federal magistrate overruled the state order pending a $25 million lawsuit dump owners brought against the state. The suit later was dropped.
Also Tuesday, Kim-Stan's owners apparently missed a deadline to deposit about $500,000 in a trust fund to provide for eventual closure of the landfill and environmental monitoring for years. The company has set aside only $55,000 for capping and monitoring, which some engineers say would cost at least $5 million.
State officials had no word Tuesday on whether the money was in. "I don't expect it's going to come," said John Ely, a Department of Waste Management official who has worked months on Kim-Stan complaints.
Calls to Joe Roberts, the Wise County lawyer now representing Kim-Stan, and to Kim-Stan's office at the landfill, were not returned Tuesday.
The company's officers, registered with the State Corporation Commission, are Shelcy Mullins Sr. and Jerry Wharton, both of Wise County, and Bill Stover and Jim Taylor, both of Troy, Mich.
They bought the 18-year-old landfill in 1988 from local owners Jack Kimberlin and H.R. Stancil and turned the relatively quiet dumping ground for local garbage into a bustling business in out-of-state trash.
Clarence Farmer, chairman of the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors, said he is afraid Kim-Stan will pull up stakes and leave the county and state with a mammoth cleanup. "That really bothers us," he said Tuesday.
The landfill has grown in the past year from a flat plain of garbage to a reeking mountain of debris. Daily cargoes of waste have grown from 40 or 50 trucks to as many as 140.
Longtime picketers against the dump say the operators no longer seem to be even trying to cover the garbage with soil by nightfall, as they promised the state they would do.
"They're covering very little of it. It just looks terrible," Judy Cottrell said Tuesday night after her usual day-long vigil at a picketing shack near the dump gate.
"You should have been there today," she said. "It smelled terrible. It seems like it's getting nastier and nastier."
by CNB