TRUMBULL COUNTY Ohio EPA mails permit to treat landfill

The treatment is to get rid of the landfill's 'rotten egg' odor.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The permit to treat leachate at the Warren Recycling landfill before it's taken off-site is in the mail.
Katharina Snyder of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the permit to install the system was mailed earlier this week. That will enable Warren Hills, the company that operates the landfill, to treat leachate generated at the facility before pumping it to the city's sewer system.
The treatment is to remove the hydrogen sulfide "rotten egg" odor.
Last month, many residents complained of increased odor from the site coming from leachate which had accumulated at the facility since December. Paul Barley, operations manager, said weather conditions and economic factors contributed to the leachate being allowed to accumulate.
Barley said at a meeting Wednesday with officials from the U.S. and Ohio EPAs, Ohio and city health departments, Warren Township, the citizens group Our Lives Count and other agencies that the company has the equipment available to set up the pretreatment system. It's just been waiting for the permit from the OEPA.
"We want this thing to work as much as anyone else," Barley said.
Years of complaints
For years, residents have complained of the offensive odor, saying it makes them sick. A study released last year by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a nonregulatory arm of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, concluded that the odor was coming from the landfill and the area around it was a health hazard.
Wednesday's meeting was the second in a series of gatherings of officials from the various entities aimed at improving communication.
ATSDR plans to collect more data of conditions around the landfill to determine if the situation has improved. The agency also is working with the Ohio Department of Health to try to get funding for a health and exposure study, said Michelle Colledge, an environmental health scientist with ATSDR.
Warren Hills and Warren Recycling have hired a Columbia, Mo., company to install monitors that will measure hydrogen sulfide and collect meteorological data around the landfill.
The device to collect meteorological data such as wind direction, precipitation, temperature and barometric pressure will be on the roof of LaBrae High School. One of the air monitors will be upwind of the landfill and the other will be downwind.
denise_dick@vindy.com