Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 10, 1994 TAG: 9402100147
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Aggie Vint was one of the many Alleghany County citizens who fought to close the dump in her community.
Now she is fighting another battle - to get the place cleaned up.
"Lord, you can smell it. You can smell it from the interstate," Vint said.
Earlier this week, Vint and Alicia Gordon - members of the county-based Concerned Citizens for a Cleaner Environment - testified before a General Assembly appropriations subcommittee.
They are throwing their support behind a budget amendment sponsored by Del. Creigh Deeds, D-Warm Springs, seeking $9.6 million in state money to properly close the landfill.
It was the first time members of the House Appropriations capital outlay subcommittee heard testimony from citizens living near Kim-Stan.
"And I said, `Sir, we'll take half of it now to get this started,' " Vint said. "It doesn't mean we're going to get it, but we're getting one step closer."
Deeds' bill would allocate almost $5 million in the first year of the biennium. That would pay for putting a permanent cap on the 25-acre landfill, said Jerry Leszkiewicz a Reston consultant who prepared a closure plan for Kim-Stan in 1993.
That phase would also include a system to trap the methane and other gases being emitted by the estimated 1 million tons of decomposing garbage.
Another $4.7 million would be allocated in 1995-96 to divert surface and ground water, and to build a plant to treat leachate, the rain water that has run through the buried garbage.
Vint acknowledges that trying to get so much money from a financially strapped legislature is going to be difficult. The subcommittee, which divvies up money for construction and other capital projects, has $86 million in requests, said Jim Roberts, a staff member for the committee.
The University of Virginia is seeking the most - $20 million for its law school. Other projects include parking decks, prisons, museums, mental health facilities, parks and the like.
Roberts said committee members are concerned that handing over big bucks for Kim-Stan could open a floodgate of requests from other localities facing their own costly environmental cleanups.
Somehow, it must be done, Leszkiewicz said. "The state is the deep pocket that's going to have to take care of this one way or another, at one time or another."
No one has taken responsibility for the dump since 1990, when some of its owners went bankrupt and others were sent to prison for embezzling profits from the dump operation.
Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo, R-Fincastle, is sponsoring a companion bill to Deeds' that would appropriate state funds to clean up waste sites on a priority basis, based on a report last year by the secretary of Natural Resources.
His bill does not name Kim-Stan, although the dump is at the top of the list in that report.
"If you start talking about Kim-Stan, it sounds very parochial, very pork barrel-ish, if you will," Trumbo explained. "It is two different approaches, hoping one of them will work."
More importantly, he said, the issue of cleaning up abandoned dumps, including toxic spills, illegal dumps and tire dumps, is statewide.
Former Gov. Douglas Wilder's budget recommended a $10 per ton fee on all solid waste generated or dumped in the state and $15 per ton for hazardous waste. At those rates, the state would earn $51 million a year, most of which would be used to assist local governments in meeting strict new landfill regulations and for cleaning up dumps like Kim-Stan.
The Alleghany County landfill was built in 1972, before liners were required. Basically, it is a huge hole in the ground, filled with household and nonhazardous industrial waste.
In 1988, new owners bought the dump and started hauling in truckloads of trash from New York, New Jersey and other places. A fish kill in June 1989 was traced to the landfill, sparking a battle among the dump's owners, state officials and local residents.
The state assessed civil penalties of $1.5 million, but the owners filed for bankruptcy. The state eventually collected $100,000 from them, some of which paid for administrative costs.
About $80,000 of that money, plus $300,000 from Wilder's contingency fund, paid for the temporary cap and for consultants to develop the closure plan.
The dump is covered by a few inches of dirt, not enough to keep out the rain that washes through the garbage, picking up toxins before leaking into the environment. Organic compounds and heavy metals have been detected in the leachate.
"It's laid there since May the 10th of 1990, and nobody's done anything," Vint said. "It's just sitting there."
by CNB