TRUMBULL COUNTY Board delays landfillpermit

Both sides expect their efforts to continue.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WEATHERSFIELD -- The Trumbull County Board of Health has postponed permitting a Lordstown landfill until a neighbor's claim that part of the facility is the 100-year flood plain is checked out.
Very little has changed on the Lafarge North America's application to start dumping demolition debris at its property on Newton Falls-Bailey Road since it was first approved in September, company officials say. There also have not been many changes at the facility, which is being used as a slag landfill.
However, state law requires landfill permits be renewed annually, in December, and neighborhood opposition to the project has mounted over the past four months.
"Landfills are noisy, dirty and dusty," said Brian Sechler, who lives 800 yards from the Lafarge facility in a farm that has been in his family for 161 years. "My farm is my sanctuary. When I come home, I want it to be quiet."
At the board of health meeting Thursday, opponents of the project, including a lawyer, engineer and environmental expert hired by Lordstown, pointed out possible contradictions or small errors in Lafarge's permit application.
What was pointed out
But the objection that stuck came from Lauraine Breda, a registered nurse and homemaker who lives less than a mile from the facility.
On maps supporting the application, a required 200-foot buffer zone surrounding the planned landfill creeps over into the flood plain, Breda said. She presented the board with maps that appeared to back up her claim.
State law does not permit any of the facility to fall within the 100-year flood plain, she said.
The possible violation was acknowledged by Katharina Snyder, who reviewed the Lafarge's plans for Ohio EPA, after Breda showed her the maps and read her the law.
Neither Ohio EPA nor the county health department raised questions about the facility creeping into the flood plain when they each approved the plan earlier this year. That part of the facility also included a retention pond to allow sediment to clear from water runoff.
"It may be a technicality, or it may be extremely relevant," said Jason Earnhart, the assistant county prosecutor who represents the board.
He said that Snyder and health department staff members could not review the question within a few minutes, during the meeting.
What company says
Company representatives said that if a problem does exist, it will be simple to move the edge of the buffer back out of the flood plain.
"The line was arbitrarily put on the map," said Scot Evans, a geologist with Bowser Morner, a company that consults with Lafarge. "It will be very easy to move it."
It is not clear what, if any, legal ramifications there would be if the board was not able to decide on Lafarge's license before the end of the year, Earnhart said.
The mayor of Lordstown and village council are fighting the landfill on another front, by asking Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew Logan to nullify the permit granted the health department in September. The village claims that it was not properly notified of the permit application.
Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill would not comment if the health board's actions Thursday would have any bearing on the lawsuit.
Residents opposed to the landfill said they also would continue to fight.
"We will not stop," Breda said. "This was a small victory."