Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201260089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COLLINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
LEAVE US ALONE, RESIDENTS TELL LANDFILL BUILDER
There hasn't been such an uproar in these parts since the last NASCAR Winston Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.Hundreds of people jammed the Henry County auditorium last week to tell a Northern garbage company to pack up its glossy brochures and aerial maps and hit the road.
Chambers Development Co. of Pittsburgh, one of the country's biggest landfill creators, wants to build and operate a big dump for Henry County and Martinsville.
Local people don't want it.
"You don't need a guy from New York coming down here and telling you how to run a truck," an elderly bearded man said at Thursday night's public hearing.
The notion that Henry County can't run its own landfill never sat well. Chambers' advance men insist they didn't even imply it, but the impression was there.
"If Henry County ain't got sense enough to run Henry County," said Supervisor S.E. Moran, "then give it back to the Indians."
County Sheriff H. Frank Cassell laid down his badge Thursday night, put on a suit and came as a private citizen to beg supervisors not to hire Chambers. If the company takes garbage from an 80-mile radius, as proposed, he said he feared "another Kim-Stan or Love Canal."
Under Chambers' plan, garbage could come from several Virginia counties and North Carolina.
Only one of about 30 speakers - local recycling and litter-control organizer Nancy Henderson - spoke in favor of Chambers at the hearing. She was booed.
A month-old Henry County group, Citizens Against Regional Dumping or CARD, had 4,624 signatures on a petition against Chambers' plan by Thursday night; and the figures were piling up faster than pledges at a Jerry Lewis Telethon.
As far as regional environmentalists are concerned, Chambers' potential move into Henry County is a hot topic. They've been cranking out old newspaper clippings and government papers on Chambers' troubles at other landfills.
Pete Castelli of Floyd County, southern Appalachian coordinator for the national Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, said Chambers is like a pack of vultures posed to take advantage of the rural county.
Chambers won a contract last year to build a landfill in Anson County, N.C. Denise Lee with the Blue Ridge Environmental League there came to Henry County last week to warn people about Chambers' polished proposals.
In her county, she said, Chambers began by talking fairly small - a landfill for 10 counties. Now, Lee said, it could take waste from all over the Carolinas.
Greg Rosser, a Chambers engineer, was weary after hearing two hours of hostility toward his company Thursday night. He's used to it. "It's this strong or stronger everywhere we go," he said.
Chambers owns, manages or leases 16 landfills in nine states, including a new $30 million, double-liner landfill in rural Charles City County. That takes garbage from as far away as New York, and its revenues have cut property taxes and bankrolled construction of an entire new school system, he said.
Rosser said people don't understand that Chambers just wants to help, that it was invited here to solve a problem. "No one's laid the facts in front of them," he said. Chambers contends that the county could save $8 to $9 for each ton of garbage by letting the private company handle it.
Chambers marketer Jeffrey Meredith said the company has a respectable record for its 22 years in the waste business. It's true, he said, that the company had about 60 violations at a Pennsylvania landfill, but most of those were from tarps not being secure on trucks.
Environmental organizers here also have distributed documents showing that Indiana regulators charged Chambers with blowing litter, leachate leaks and inadequate coverage of garbage at a landfill there in the 1980s.
Two county supervisors have come out against Chambers so far. Four others and the Board of Supervisors' tie-breaker, a veterinarian, aren't taking stands just yet.
Chambers hasn't ditched its plans, but L.E. "Butch" Joyce, president of Joyce Engineering, acknowledged Thursday night that county residents don't want Chambers. Joyce's company, acting as a consultant, had recommended Chambers.
People at the hearing cheered when Mitchell Walsh, a leader of the CARD group, told the supervisors, "Y'all need to put your foot on their rear ends and get them out of town."
"We don't need you," James Swinney, another opponent, told Chambers. "The same door that let you in will let you out." People are angry at the supervisors for entertaining Chambers' proposals over citizens' objections.
John A. Jones, who lives on the western end of Martinsville, said people in his subdivision are worried about odors and property devaluation if a landfill is built on a site about a mile away.
"Why put it in a black settlement?" and why not in a less populated area, he asked. He has been gathering signatures on a petition against it.
Worries about a big landfill are the same as in all rural counties - heavy traffic on country roads, toxic contamination of ground water or rivers if there's a break in the landfill liner, and falling property values for people close by.
Everybody agrees on one thing: Local officials have tough days ahead as they rush to meet the state's stricter landfill regulations by 1994. Joyce said Henry County's landfill can take trash about another year and Martinsville's can hold out for several more years.
Some people are talking about turning waste into pellets, mixing it with with coal and selling it as fuel. Some suggest baling the garbage and not burying it. Others are pushing recycling and waste reduction, along with a smaller dump.
But, judging by speakers at the hearing, the hottest new idea is a waste incinerator. Supervisor Chairman R.J. Frye wants one but doesn't know how the county can afford it.
S.E. Moran, a retired construction man and a county supervisor for 32 years, is impressed with what he's seen of waste-to-energy incinerators that generate steam for sale. Many people, including Martinsville Republican politician Naomi Hodge-Muse, like the idea, too.
But others warn that an incinerator would be an environmentally harmful idea - maybe worse than a Chambers landfill.
Members of the CARD citizens group are busy now with a whole new campaign. They're organizing workshops against an incinerator.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.