Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"That's nasty stuff coming through there," Peter deFur, staff scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund's Richmond office, said Tuesday after reviewing a May 18 board memorandum on the chemical constituents.
Levels of fecal coliform listed there were "outrageous . . . pure poison," he said. Ammonia readings were above acceptable levels, said deFur, and conductivity measurements show a saltiness as concentrated as sea water.
It's been 41 days since the state closed Kim-Stan and ordered it to halt pollution. Owners of the private landfill, claiming their company is broke, have cleared the site and left the state with an expensive, massive cleanup.
Cynthia Bailey, executive director of the state's Department of Waste Management, got a roadside tour of the site Tuesday with a dozen of the dump's most steadfast protesters.
Members of the Citizens for a Cleaner Environment showed her a black liquid running from a spot near the western edge of the landfill.
Aggie Vint, leader of the citizen group's task force working with state agencies on cleanup strategies, was reassured by Bailey's four-hour visit. "I think the agencies are trying real hard," she said.
She and other members of her group long were critical of the state for not heeding warnings about Kim-Stan's environmental violations.
Now the group is taking a more behind-the-scenes, conciliatory stance with the state. They invited Bailey here Tuesday. "We kind of put on the peace hat this morning," said Acil Deeds, another member.
Vint and others said Bailey would not reveal the state's legal strategy against Kim-Stan's owners.
Wayne Heslep, attorney for Alleghany County, said state officials have assured him they will pursue Kim-Stan and individuals associated with it as they search for ways to pay for a cleanup. It is expected to cost millions at a time when the state is facing revenue shortfalls.
In the 18 months before it was shut down, the dump took thousands of truckloads of garbage from Northeastern cities - sometimes 140 tractor-trailers a day from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Bailey told the citizens her office is studying ways to control the leachate - the toxic waters generated when rainwater washes through garbage. Some dump protesters said Bailey seemed to favor a portable leachate-treatment system.
It might be cheaper than trucking the leachate out of state, as Kim-Stan owners did for months under orders from the state.
And, according to the May 18 water board memo, no sewage-treatment plants in the area can handle the leachate. The memo said the Low Moor, Clifton Forge and Covington plants lack capacity and those at Lynchburg, Roanoke and Covington's Westvaco Corp. paper mill already have high levels of metals.
Bailey was reported to have expressed interest in a hydrological study to determine where leachate may be emerging at the landfill or, perhaps, some distance from it.
Her office recently hired Steve Bennett, operator of a sawmill adjacent to Kim-Stan, to apply an intermediate dirt cover to the 48-acre dump. Bennett is more than halfway done with the nearly $50,000 job.
Citizens are glad Bennett got the work, but they begged Bailey not to sign any cleanup contracts with Kim-Stan operators or others believed to be associated with Kim-Stan. "We don't want the people who caused this mess to come back in and make money again," said Vint.
Bennett said in a Tuesday interview that Junior Mullins, a former manager at Kim-Stan and son of one of its owners, recently asked to subcontract some of Bennett's work covering garbage at the landfill.
"I told him if I did that, I'd have to move to the other side of the Mississippi River," Bennett said, joking. Mullins and other Kim-Stan officials and employees are not popular in the area.
Bennett said Mullins expressed serious interest in bidding for the eventual top-dollar job of putting a permanent soil cap over the landfill. "He swore up one side and down the other he'd be the low bidder," said Bennett.
by CNB