
DATE: Thursday, May 29, 1997                TAG: 9705290437

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   91 lines

FOES AGREE: DUMP PROJECT LANDFILL PROPOSAL

Private trash companies and environmentalists are not usually so chummy. But when it comes to a proposed $300 million expansion of the regional landfill, they agree on one thing: The project should be dumped.

Their unlikely alliance spells new trouble for the planned landfill in Suffolk, which the Southeastern Public Service Authority says is needed to hold South Hampton Roads' garbage of the future.

SPSA's existing landfill, also in Suffolk, is expected to run out of space by 2001. An interim storage vault, as designed, would add another 12 to 14 years of life. After that, SPSA hopes to open its new facility on the remote but ecologically rich edge of the Great Dismal Swamp.

Private waste firms and conservation groups, who often clash on issues such as recycling and incineration, are united in their opposition to the project - but for different reasons.

Environmentalists, led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, fear construction of the landfill would destroy too many wetlands - 377 acres of forested wetlands, to be exact.

Once discarded as worthless swamp, wetlands are now viewed as vital ecological features. They filter pollutants, purge groundwater of contaminants, control flooding and provide habitat for birds and small game.

Their numbers, however, have been steadily shrinking, especially in southeastern Virginia. This trend motivated the governors of mid-Atlantic states to sign a ``no net loss'' pledge of wetlands preservation in 1988.

Meanwhile, private waste companies - including conglomerates Browning-Ferris Industries and Waste Management Inc. - worry that a new landfill would undermine their efforts to gain a bigger share of the lucrative garbage market in South Hampton Roads, which SPSA has dominated for the past 20 years.

``Politics certainly makes strange bedfellows,'' said Roy A. Hoagland, staff attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia.

Added John Hadfield, assistant director of SPSA: ``I wouldn't call it an unholy alliance, but it is certainly an unlikely one.''

Hoagland was in Chesapeake on Wednesday to urge SPSA's board of directors to reconsider expansion plans, arguing that less damaging alternatives exist.

Namely, he said, SPSA could build a new landfill in Isle of Wight County, where only 30 acres of wetlands would be lost. Or the authority could bury local trash in several vacant private landfills on the Peninsula.

``We think they're absolutely right,'' H. Benson Dendy III, a lobbyist for private waste haulers, said of environmentalists' concerns. ``We've been saying all along that alternatives are out there that would save taxpayers' money and help the environment.''

Not so, counters SPSA.

Alternatives already have been thoroughly studied, and all of them would be more expensive, SPSA executive director Durwood Curling has long argued.

The Isle of Wight site, for example, would cost the authority - and ultimately, SPSA's customers - $180 million more than the Suffolk option, Curling has said.

The authority, which serves Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Suffolk, Franklin and Isle of Wight and Southampton counties, has been trying to win environmental permits for the Great Dismal Swamp location since 1988. Government regulators have rejected plans for fear that endangered and threatened species would be affected and that an excessive amount of wetlands would be ruined.

The SPSA has recently come up with a new remedy, however, that for the first time appears to be winning favor with the Army Corps of Engineers, which must approve any construction in wetlands.

Along with the Virginia Department of Transportation, SPSA would acquire a 3,600-acre farm in Chesapeake, convert it to wetlands and give it to the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge for protection.

The gift would serve as compensation for wetlands destroyed by the landfill and by highway projects planned by the Transportation Department.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to veto the deal, saying the gift would not help the Bay; the wetlands, instead, would shield Albemarle Sound to the south, in North Carolina, Hoagland has said.

The debate is expected to continue for months, with a final determination anticipated by the end of the year, officials have estimated. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

[Sanitation workers dumping trash in a trash truck]

SPSA says its existing landfill in Suffolk will run out of space by

2001 and wants to build a new dump on the edge of the Great Dismal

Swamp. The agency has been seeking environmental permits since 1988.

...Creates an unlikely alliance

Environmentalists say the construction of the new landfill would

destroy too many wetlands - 377 acres.

Private waste companies are concerned that a new landfill would

undermine their efforts to get more business in the area's garbage

market. The SPSA has dominated the market for the past 20 years. KEYWORDS: LANDFILL