Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 30, 1994 TAG: 9405020117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CATHRYN MCCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CLIFTON FORGE LENGTH: Long
In the summer of 1989, a few dozen carp were found belly up in an Alleghany County stream. If not for the suspicions of a handful of citizens in this quiet mountain community, the incident might have gone unreported.
But state officials were called in and discovered the fish had suffocated, robbed of oxygen by toxic pollution that was gushing into the stream and the nearby Jackson River.
Word of the fish kill spread throughout state environmental agencies, reaching the governor's office and eventually Congress.
For the next couple of years, memos were fired back and forth among state officials, newspaper headlines appeared almost daily, speeches were made, lawsuits filed, criminal charges brought, counter-lawsuits filed and new regulations enacted.
The source of all the high-level activity and the pollution was a monstrous, stinking, leaking landfill called Kim-Stan. Citizens organized and launched a round-the-clock, daily vigil outside the dump gates, even blockading tractor-trailers hauling in thousands of tons of trash, mostly from out of state. They got the media's attention, the media got the state's attention, and the state got the landfill owner's attention. In court.
The dump was closed in May 1990. The trucks stopped rolling in. Kim-Stan Inc. went bankrupt, letting the two owners off the hook financially. Two other principals were jailed for swiping the landfill's profits. State workers put a layer of dirt over the 24-acre pile of trash.
Things settled down. Most of the citizens went home, the reporters left and the bureaucrats turned to other matters.
And the dump never stopped leaking.
Alicia Gordon lives about half a mile from Kim-Stan and is one of the original members of Concerned Citizens for a Cleaner Environment.
"We still have monthly meetings. Support has dwindled down to the concerned dozen, which is sad," she said. But those dozen keep the pressure on, calling legislators and top officials in the state Department of Environmental Quality, whom they know by first names.
"People have got to realize it's here," said Aggie Vint, another of the original activists whom Gordon calls "the voice of persistence."
After five or six years of dealing with the landfill, they'd both like to put it behind them. But they can't.
"We need to go on, we need to do this," Vint said. If they don't, they wonder who will.
This month, Gordon took a couple of visitors to the landfill. She pointed to the roadside ditch where a steady stream of rust-colored, oily water flows into a culvert that runs under Virginia 696.
"Those rocks are not supposed to be orange," she said.
On average, about 36,000 gallons a day of contaminated liquid seeps out of the dump. That's enough to flood a Little League baseball field under 1 foot of leachate. In wet weather the seepage is almost twice that much, according to a study done by CH2M Hill, a Reston environmental engineering firm.
Rainwater and other precipitation trickles through the trash, which is 50 feet deep on average. As the water picks up chemicals from discarded batteries, computers, paint cans, chemical drums and other household and industrial waste, it turns into leachate, which eventually makes its way into the Jackson River.
It also seeps into the ground water, where heavy metals such as arsenic and lead were measured at three times higher than allowable levels in 1991.
Then there's the smell. The decomposing garbage emits sulfate gas, sending the odor of rotten eggs across the valley and Interstate 64. Explosive levels of methane have been measured at a few spots on top of the dump.
"This is a health problem. We're not breathing good air," Vint said. "It's an accident waiting to happen."
Federal and state health officials say the dump does not pose an immediate health threat because there is little, if any, public exposure to the leachate. Most households in the rural community use public water, and the site is fenced off. The ditches, however, are alongside the road. A sign from the Virginia Department of Health warns people that the water is not safe for recreational uses.
Molly Rutledge, director of the Alleghany Highlands health district, said she routinely tests a private well near the dump, and has found no contamination.
"There's no apparent acute public health threat at this time. There certainly was several years ago," she said. She added that even minimal exposure to pollution of this sort may not take its toll for many years.
"It's the unknown that's bothersome," Rutledge said.
Jerry Leszkiewicz, the CH2M Hill consultant who prepared the closure plan two years ago, said carbon dioxide and other gases rising from the landfill may be displacing oxygen in the community, which lies in a narrow valley between two mountain ranges. That could cause nearby residents to experience headaches, lethargy and other symptoms.
"These poor folks in Selma ... and up and down the valley are dealing with it daily," he said.
CH2M Hill estimates it would cost at least $5 million to properly cap the dump, requiring a thick plastic sheet, 2 feet of soil and grass and shrubs on top. That would keep the rain out, but it won't stop water getting into the dump - basically a huge, unlined hole in the ground - from underground springs and ground water.
It will cost another $5 million to treat the remaining leachate and monitor the landfill for years to come.
"There's no way to do a Kmart, $2 million version," Leszkiewicz said. "You've got to build it to stand the test of time and the elements up in the mountains there."
The Department of Environmental Quality has spent $453,662 to temporarily cap the dump and pay for the closure plan. Inspectors check the dump quarterly, take pictures and write reports that basically say Kim-Stan is still leaking. They also check the water quality in the Jackson River downstream from the site.
But that's about it.
"Nobody wants to take responsibility for closing it," said Steve Bennett, the owner of a sawmill next door and the Alleghany County supervisor for the district that includes Kim-Stan. "I'm not sure the state's got the money to close it, or I'm not sure the state is willing to spend the money to close it, let's put it that way."
Kim-Stan is considered the worst landfill in the state. But it's not bad enough to qualify for federal Superfund money.
No one - not Alleghany County, not the environmental department, not the General Assembly - has $10 million to clean up and close the dump.
Most states have a program to clean up abandoned waste sites when the owner can't be found or can't pay. They tax those who generate garbage, transport it, import and bury it. They appropriate general funds, they float bonds, and use other money-raising tactics.
Virginia, along with 12 other states, simply has no money or program for abandoned dumps.
"Kim-Stan is a festering environmental wound for the state. It's known outside the state," said Leszkiewicz, who works around the world on landfills. "The longer it stays like this, the worse it will get."
Department officials don't disagree. Staffers shake their heads when the dump is mentioned, and one top manager, in an internal memo, referred to it as Kim-"Stain." Although there's not much they can do about the dump, they get the rap for it anyway.
"There is no person or entity responsible for the facility," said James Adams, head of the waste management division. "That's the problem. The department is responsible for managing responsible parties for compliance. When there's no responsible parties, the department has no one to manage."
Where are they now?
When Virginia shut down Kim-Stan in 1990, it went after the owners to pay for what was then estimated as a $5 million cleanup. The state got $141,650.
There won't be any more.
Jerry Wharton and Shelcy Mullins Sr., the original partners who bought the dump in 1988, set up Kim-Stan Inc. to run the landfill. Creditors forced the company into bankruptcy when the dump closed, but found no money. The state sued Wharton, but a federal judge said he could not be held personally liable.
All the landfill's finances and profits had been handled by two other partners, Howard J. Taylor and William Stover, in Michigan. When Virginia authorities finally tracked them down, they, too, were broke.
State investigators charged Taylor and Stover with embezzling up to $2 million of the dump's money, which the two had spent on themselves, their families, and other investment scams. They were convicted in September 1992 and Taylor was sentenced to five years in state prison and Stover to eight.
Taylor was paroled in May 1993 and taken into federal custody for two counts of defrauding a Michigan bank of $173,965, according to court records there. He served 10 months in various federal prisons, and was released this past February. His last known address was Florence, Ky.
Stover was paroled in November and is living in Ohio, where authorities say he reports to his parole officer as required.
Wharton and Mullins still live and work in Wise County. Mullins, a former coal miner and county sheriff, is an officer in Wilder Coal Corp. Wharton, also a longtime coal operator in Southwest Virginia, owns A&G Coal Corp. and is a principal officer in T&J Communications Inc.
Wharton's ex-wife is suing him, along with several others, for $27 million, claiming they defrauded her and used her shareholder status in A&G to deflect creditors and state penalties stemming from Kim-Stan operations. The case is pending in Wise County Circuit Court.
Kim-Stan crusaders
Every year, inflation pushes the cleanup costs up another half a million dollars, said Leszkiewicz, the consultant. That's assuming the environmental damage doesn't worsen, which, he said, is assuming a lot.
Of course, if left alone, nature will eventually stabilize the dump, cleaning out the runoff and breaking down all the junk into ordinary dirt, Leszkiewicz said. In a hundred years, perhaps.
"Will there be a tragedy in public health or safety between now and then?" he asked. Old dumps sometimes explode because of methane. Leszkiewicz said he's seen mountains of rubbish in other countries collapse and kill people.
Who's to say that couldn't happen here, he said. "Somebody needs to adopt this as a mentor to get it going."
Del. Creigh Deeds, D-Warm Springs, may be that mentor. For each of his three years in the legislature, he's sponsored bills to get state money to close Kim-Stan.
In 1992, he asked for $5.5 million. "Well, I didn't get anything," Deeds said.
In 1993, it was $3.5 million. He didn't get that, either, but he did get a bill to direct the Department of Environmental Quality to survey abandoned waste sites in Virginia to see how other states are handling old dumps.
This year, he asked for $9.6 million. He got a hearing before the appropriations subcommittee, where the real work is done, he said. Aggie Vint and Alicia Gordon drove to Richmond on a day's notice to testify about the smell and the muck still leaking from the dump.
"It's one thing to talk about a problem. It's another to put a face on it," Deeds said. The legislature approved $125,000 for a joint subcommittee to come up with an abandoned landfill program for Virginia, including funding mechanisms.
Deeds will likely chair the subcommittee, he said. The other four legislators haven't been appointed, but he plans to draw representatives from around the state, take the group on a field trip, "and have the legislators out walking around Kim-Stan, and I hope it's a muggy day, after a heavy rain and 95 degrees."
Deeds' goal is to put a program in place by next year, and begin to close out Kim-Stan by 1996. That may not be realistic, he admitted. The legislative process is slow, especially when it comes to finding new dollars.
And, he noted, Gov. George Allen has already delayed the process by at least a couple of months.
So what's new? Vint and Gordon ask. They've dealt with Allen's two predecessors, and still the dump is leaking.
"I'll be the first to admit, I'm tired of it," Gordon said. Every few months, something happens that rekindles her indignation and anger. Then it settles down.
She and Vint still get calls from people in Virginia and around the country, who ask their advice on forming a community activist group to stop one environmental threat or another.
Whether Kim-Stan is fixed in their lifetime, they hope they've helped in two ways. One, citizens can make a difference, Gordon said. And two, Virginia now requires financial insurance from all landfill operators.
They collected enough documentation of their fight - newspaper clippings, hours of video of themselves on the nightly news, boxes of memos, reports and lab analyses - to do a mini-series, Gordon joked. They've even tossed around the idea of writing a book.
"Just to get it out there so it doesn't happen to someone else," Gordon said.
Vint, Gordon and a handful of others continue their watch. They still make the occasional phone call to Richmond and to their legislators and local officials.
"About the only ones that work on it now are what I call the diehards," said Bennett, the county supervisor.
Most of the residents who picketed the dump when it was open, who stood in front of tractor-trailers, who called and wrote every official in the book, are battle-weary. They try to forget about it, having heard all too often that there's no money to stop the pollution. At least the dump is shut down.
by CNB