Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080717
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The state's top waste management official moved Monday to strip the Kim-Stan landfill of its operating permit by late this month for running an open dump and flouting state law.
Joe Roberts, Kim-Stan's lawyer, said today that if the state shuts down the dump, he expects its workers and leased equipment to disappear because there is no money for them or for proper closure. Engineers have said that could cost $5 million.
"All the money's gone," said Roberts, brother-in-law of Kim-Stan president Jerry Wharton of Wise County. "The company right now is probably a million dollars in the red."
Earlier this spring, Roberts said, state and county officials asked for a meeting with Kim-Stan officials to talk about eventual closure of the dump. He said he and Wharton met with representatives of the county, the state Water Control Board and the Department of Waste Management in Richmond on March 23.
Roberts said Kim-Stan offered to pay the county $1.50 for each ton of garbage coming to the dump if the landfill could stay in business until Dec. 31. Roberts said that would have brought the county $400,000 to $600,000 for the rest of the year.
In another proposal, Kim-Stan offered, through its customers who send it garbage from Northeastern states, to post a $1 million bond by the end of the year.
Kim-Stan's other conditions were that its leachate, the polluted water generated in landfills, be accepted by the water treatment plants of Clifton Forge or Alleghany County for $10,000 to $12,000 a month. Roberts said that under state orders, the company now is paying $150,000 to $300,000 a month to ship the leachate to approved treatment facilities out of state.
Kim-Stan also wanted to curtail environmental monitoring of water on the site, which Roberts said was costing the company as much as $25,000 a month. The dump also wanted permission to use soil on the border of the site to cover the garbage. A final condition was that all state and county lawsuits against the dump be put on hold.
Roberts said the county and state responded that they wanted a bond of at least $2 million. He said Kim-Stan offered to provide the money more quickly - a $500,000 bond by May 15 and another $500,000 bond by Aug. 15.
Kim-Stan received no response to that offer, so Roberts said he wrote County Attorney Wayne Heslep last week that all proposals were off.
Roberts complained today that the state has failed to give Kim-Stan proper notice of efforts to close the dump. "We haven't had due process on this at all," he said.
He said he probably will appeal Monday's revocation of Kim-Stan's landfill permit in Circuit Court. He said he might take his defense of the dump all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Monday's permit revocation provides a backup plan for closing the troublesome Alleghany County dump if another shutdown attempt fails in court Thursday.
The state attorney general's office is set to argue in a hearing in Alleghany County Circuit Court Thursday morning that the private dump be closed because of continuing pollution.
Cynthia Bailey, director of the Department of Waste Management, said in a Monday order that Kim-Stan is an unlawful open dump discharging pollutants into state waters. The state has documented since the early 1980s that contaminated waters have flowed from the dump to the Jackson River.
Because the landfill lacks protective construction to stop pollution, Bailey said, it poses a hazard to human health or to the environment. She cited Kim-Stan's lack of state-mandated insurance and money for proper closure as other reasons to pull its permit.
Her order will take effect 15 days after Kim-Stan officials receive it via certified mail. Roberts said today the effective date would be May 22 or 23.
Kim-Stan can appeal the permit revocation or any shutdown, although judges could keep the landfill closed while appeals were heard.
Last week, state officials said as far as they knew, Kim-Stan had paid only $55,000 into a closure fund that was supposed to be above the $500,000 mark by now. The fund was part of an agreement Kim-Stan reached with the state last year.
Joe Roberts said last week the accord would not be honored because the state overreached its authority in recent dealings with Kim-Stan. He argued at a March hearing that the state was unfair to Kim-Stan because it does most of its business in out-of-state trash.
Monday's permit revocation is the state's second against Kim-Stan in less than a year.
Bailey first revoked the permit last June. A federal magistrate overruled her order, pending a $25 million lawsuit dump owners brought against the state. The suit was dismissed in March by a federal judge who rejected Kim-Stan's argument that the state targeted the landfill for discriminatory treatment.
by CNB