Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990 TAG: 9005180226
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Following a recent technical review, the Department of Waste Management earlier this month requested additional geological information about the site and said it could not approve the authority's application "as submitted" until it got satisfactory answers to a long list of questions.
In a letter to NRRA Executive Director Charles Maus, the department said it needed to know more about wet-weather site conditions, intermittent streams, and plans to maintain proper distances from bedrock and the seasonal high water table before it could approve a preliminary application to locate a landfill on the 800-acre Pulaski County tract, now known as the Matson Property.
The department also questioned whether there was enough of the right type of cover soil.
"This is a paper review," said consulting engineer John Olver, of Olver Inc. of Blacksburg, pointing out that the geologist who drafted the letter was new on the job and had not visited the site.
Olver said his firm so far has seen nothing that "gives us any alarm about the site."
He also suggested the department was still feeling its way in the landfill permit approval process and was raising certain issues prematurely. "They're on a learning curve," he said.
Olver engineer Graham Simmerman said additional test borings would be required to respond to the Department of Waste Management questions.
"There could be additional expense associated with that," he said, but predicted the additional work would not adversely affect the project's schedule.
He also said Olver would comply with the department's request for more frequent monitoring of test wells to be drilled at the site, but he said it's still not known if one or two individual landfills will be on the tract.
Olver also said his firm was working closely with the state Department of Historic Resources to avoid disturbing archaeological and historical artifacts on the property, including Civil War battle sites.
Olver was also optimistic that a southern expansion project at the interim Ingles Mountain Landfill in Radford would be ready in time.
"We need to be operational [by] mid-August," he said. "We don't see any surprises."
The authority authorized Maus to solicit bids for time and materials to prepare the expansion and to proceed with liner construction.
Maus said a leachate line at the Ingles site should be installed within a month. The NRRA is seeking an industrial discharge permit so the city's sanitary sewer system can treat landfill leachate, which, Maus said, has a much higher organic content than household sewage.
Meanwhile, the authority hopes to have a yard waste composting facility in operation by this fall at the Peppers Ferry Treatment Plant.
Olver called that project "non-controversial." It's the only one the experts on both sides of the fence agree on,` he said.
The composting site would prepare organic yard trash into suitable composting material using a grinder and magnets to remove ferrous metals.
Authority member and Pulaski County supervisor Bruce Fariss spoke against Maus' suggestion to delay equipment purchases until next month, when NRRA members could review what is available.
"I think we should start doing it now, said Fariss. In Roanoke, they're selling stuff we're putting onto the debris landfill now."
The NRRA approved his motion giving Maus authority to put the necessary equipment out for bid.
In other business, the authority unanimously approved a $1.2 million budget for the 1990-91 fiscal year, but not before paring proposed staff salary increases from 8 percent to 5 percent.
by CNB