LITTLE ROCK — Arsenic, ammonia and vinyl chloride seep from a patch of land that Fayetteville officials hope will one day be part of a regional park.
That assessment of the 33-acre C&L landfill, closed in 1976, comes from a consultant’s report paid for by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. Similar results were found in 2004 by another firm the city hired after accepting the landfill as part of 200 acres of land donated by a developer.
The development project stalled, but the city still plans to develop a park near the landfill property, with the landfill used as green space for such activities as ultimate Frisbee, said Connie Edmonston, director of Fayetteville Parks and Recreation.
“I may be one of the few people that still has hope” that the park will be completed, she said.
If the 200 acres is deeded to the city as expected, she said, the city can begin building needed soccer fields - near, but not on, the landfill - with $3.6 million set aside for the planned park.
The now city-owned landfill will be the first beneficiary of the Post Closure Trust Fund, established in 1991 and implemented by the Solid Waste Division of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
“This would be the first corrective action expenditure from the Post Closure Trust Fund,” said Cecillea Pond-Mayo, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
The fund was created to serve as an insurance fund for landfills, which pay into the fund, said Karen Bassett, chief deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
Bassett said that upon opening, landfills must provide financial assurance of closure costs and 20 percent of expenses expected to occur for 30 years after closure.
Pond-Mayo said that is why the fund hadn’t been used for cleanup projects up until now.
“The primary function of the fund is not to be spent but rather act as an insurance policy for currently operating or recently closed sites,” Pond-Mayo said. “It is a fund that needs a healthy balance.”
Bassett said the solid waste department started working on the C&L project but was delayed by 2007 changes in state law. The changes required the department to rank the 145 closed landfills based on their potential contamination of groundwater and surface water.
It also required the department to gain approval of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission to spend more than $50,000 on any landfill that didn’t contribute to the fund, Bassett said. C&L didn’t contribute, so approval was required and was granted earlier this month, she said.
The state plans to spend $1.5 million on recapping the landfill, which is No. 3 on the list of closed landfills. She said that studies of the landfill showed “human health risk hot spots,” which are not unusual to closed landfills.
Northwest Arkansas is home to the list’s top four closed landfills, which are evenly split between Benton and Washington counties. Of the four closed landfills, C&L is the only one not in the Beaver Lake watershed.
Springdale’s Parsons Landfill, which sits about 2 miles from the lake, is second on the list and is on track to be the second Post Closure Trust Fund project. Benton County’s Fulton Landfills, which sit at Nos. 1 and 4, don’t qualify for post closure money because there is not record of them being properly closed.
Bassett said that the department must have proof the landfill was closed properly before trust fund money can be used. The owner also has to spend $10,000 toward the project, she said.
C&L became the first project funded because the department has the most information on it, Bassett said. Priorities could change as more information is gathered on other landfills, she said.
Bassett said that the department is limited in how many such projects it can undertake, because the same people responsible for monitoring open landfills work on the closed ones. She said they hope to have four closure projects at a time.
“We’ll just take sites and as we clean them up, we’ll pick up the next one,” she said.
Parsons Landfill was the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by neighbors who said the landfill polluted their spring.
Larry Brock said he still feels the effects of drinking water laced which chemicals commonly found in laundries.
“Oh my, you have no idea,” he said. “It really screwed up my health.”
Brock, his wife, Bonnie, and their neighbors, Kenneth and Delores Mounce, sued Harold Parsons, who owns the landfill.
Parsons was ordered to pay the families $700,000 in damages in 1990 for polluting the stream the families used for drinking water. Seven years later, Kenneth Mounce died, at 55, and a few years later, the Mounces’ son, Johnny, died of cancer at 40.
Delores Mounce in 2005 told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette she couldn’t say for sure that the contaminated water was to blame, but she didn’t think it helped.
Larry Brock said that in the midst of their battle with the landfill, the couple hired engineers who said the only way to stop the landfill from polluting the stream would be to remove all the garbage. Even then it would take 100 years for polluting chemicals to clear out, the engineers told them.
Brock isn’t too impressed with the state’s plans to recap the landfill.
“I think they’re shutting the door after the horse is gone,” Brock said. “Capping would probably help, but all it would do is slow the rate of [chemicals] getting into groundwater.”
Pond-Mayo said the state has budgeted $372,300 to investigate the Parsons Landfill, and decide what, if anything, needs to be done with it.
Digging up the waste is an option, but that could cost tens of millions, Bassett said.
Though all 145 landfills won’t likely need remediation, Bassett said, the state is obligated to be fiscally responsible. That means the state will choose the most cost-effective way of handling a problematic landfill, she said.
“A proper cap on the landfill will eliminate exposure to the waste now visible, eliminate rainwater infiltration and contaminated surface water runoff,” Bassett said.
Much has changed in the business of landfills since C&L and Parsons landfills were built, said T. Baridi Nkokheli, director of Fort Smith Department of Sanitation.
Nkokheli said the federal government implemented more stringent guidelines in October 1993. Landfills, which he said are designed like above-ground pools, are now required to have at lest three feet of compacted clay liners, topped by additional layers made of two kinds of impermeable materials.
Still, the threat of pollutants reaching groundwater remains because people contaminate the waste stream by tossing prohibited items, Nkokheli said. Compacted clay has proven to be a nearly impermeable surface, but acid from a car battery, for example, can eat through the liners and clay.
Nkokheli said that landfills are required to have systems that remove liquid contaminates that are then treated at sewer plants. He said it only takes a small amount of certain chemicals to have a large impact.
“One quart of motor oil can contaminate 250,000 gallons of fresh water,” he said. “That’s what we know in the industry.”
Nkokheli said in the garbage business, such potential threats amass quickly. He said his landfill serves about 25,000 households in a seven-county area and receives nearly 400,000 tons of waste a year.
Nkokheli said he couldn’t comment on the closed landfills but doubts a new cap will completely stop the threat of pollution.
“You’re going to always have potential for groundwater contamination,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/28/2010