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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991                   TAG: 9102180339
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: C/2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KIM-STAN

The regulatory boards that monitor such operations found numerous violations of health, safety and environmental standards, but seemed impotent to make Kim-Stan comply with the law. Through proceeding after legal proceeding, the landfill kept operating and kept polluting. In the end, government did less to shut it down than its own financial problems and the site's dwindling capacity to take more garbage.

But shut down it did, nine months ago. Five months ago, creditors' suits forced the company into bankruptcy; the courts are sifting through Kim-Stan's records to determine its assets and how to divide them up.

Meantime, oily black leachate still flows from the dump site at 5 to 6 gallons a minute, and the state still is dragging its feet. Some time ago, Gov. Douglas Wilder set aside $300,000 for cleanup. It hasn't been touched. Alleghany County Administrator Macon Sammons asked Cynthia Bailey, director of the state Department of Waste Management, why.

Bailey said she's seeking an order from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court that would allow her department to do the cleanup and "put us in a position to better recover our costs." She added that she hopes soon to ask bids on work to cap the landfill, and to start putting a sediment and erosion-control plan into effect. After all that would come the leachate problem.

Certainly it would be good if the state could be among the first creditors to recover from Kim-Stan. The entire cleanup is expected to cost $1 million to $2 million; the Department of Waste Management doesn't have all those funds in hand. It may be that, legally, the state can't be held liable.

But when the commonwealth could have clamped down much earlier on Kim-Stan, prevented more pollution and probably saved on cleanup costs, it didn't act. The landfill's neighbors - and users of the Jackson River, contaminated by runoff and seepage - suffered from that delay. Why should they endure further foot-dragging?

So monumental is the task of a full-scale cleanup, it likely won't be finished before another General Assembly has a chance to earmark funds to keep it going. Later, maybe some of the money can be recovered through the courts. But first things first.