Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991                   TAG: 9102160234
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: From staff and wire reports
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

WASTE MANAGEMENT CHIEF QUITS

No successor has been named for the $63,464-per-year post, according to Gov. Douglas Wilder's office, which announced the resignation Thursday.

"The attractive professional opportunity came along, and I concluded it was one I ought to take advantage of," Bailey said.

Wilder said Bailey has "served capably" as the director of the state Department of Waste Management since its establishment in 1986.

Bailey has frequently been in the news in Western Virginia because of her department's heavy involvement in the controversy over pollution from the now-closed Kim-Stan landfill in Alleghany County.

Bailey also took part in the state's reaction to the "fluff" fire that burned for weeks in November 1989 at a Bedford County automobile recycling business.

The Kim-Stan controversy started in mid-1989, when polluted runoff from the dump killed fish in a local stream. Kim-Stan had been a small local landfill before changing hands. The new owners set up lucrative deals to accept huge amounts of trash trucked in from other states.

The pollution, traffic hassles and public outcry over the overloaded landfill tested state environmental authorities and the attorney general's office.

In May, after nearly a year of courtroom and administrative fighting, Bailey endorsed a hearing officer's findings, declared Kim-Stan illegal and ordered it closed.

Yet the cleanup is still not complete and pollution continues to flow from the dump.

The department has paid for some cleanup work and made plans for completing it, but Bailey said she is still working with the attorney general to recover costs through the bankruptcy proceedings.

Friday, Attorney General Mary Sue Terry's office said she had asked a federal bankruptcy court to allow state agencies to begin stabilizing the landfill. The work would include improving the temporary earthen cover on the landfill.