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Public hearing set on landfill capacity
YOUNGSTOWN
A public hearing will be at 6 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Poland Township Administration Building, 3339 Dobbins Road, concerning a proposal to double the capacity of the Carbon-Limestone Landfill in Poland Township.
Mike Heher, landfill manager, announced the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency hearing at Tuesday’s meeting of the Mahoning County Solid Waste Management District Policy Committee.
Heher said the vertical expansion would lengthen the active life of the landfill, which is owned by Allied Waste Services, by 50 years.
Without the expansion, the landfill would remain active for 30 more years at the current rate of dumping. With the expansion, it could remain active for 80 more years, he said.
The 750-acre landfill at 8100 S. State Line Road, began accepting waste in 1963. More than 1 million tons of waste were dumped into it last year.
“The landfill stays in the same position. It just goes a little higher,” under the proposed expansion, Heher said.
The landfill now peaks about 80 feet above the level to which the former quarry it occupies was filled in when quarrying ceased. The expansion would take it 80 feet to 100 feet above its current peak, Heher said.
Based on his experience with the landfill as a township official, James Scharville, township administrator and former trustee, said he has no objection to the expansion.
“They’re good commu- nity people out there,” Scharville said of the landfill staff and management. “They’re readily available if there are any problems.”
Carbon-Limestone accepts household, commercial and industrial garbage and construction and demolition debris, but it takes no hazardous waste and no asbestos. It takes no medical waste that hasn’t been sterilized or incinerated.
“We’re a viable business in the township,” Heher said. The landfill generates a combined monthly total of $600,000 in fees to the state, county and township, and Allied Waste provides free curbside recycling to 90,000 Mahoning County homes for the life of the landfill, Heher said.
The expansion would be accompanied by construction of a passive drainage system that will use a moat around the landfill and two five-acre sedimentation lakes to keep rainwater and groundwater away from the garbage to avoid water contamination.
The new system also will provide wetlands and wildlife habitat. Heher added.
Unlike the current drainage system, the passive system will require no pumps, he said.
Carbon-Limestone is the larger of two active landfills in Mahoning County. The other is Waste Management’s Mahoning Landfill in Springfield Township.
The committee discussed, but took no action on, a 15-year solid-waste plan for the county. It will discuss the matter further at its 9 a.m. Dec. 4 meeting in the Oak-hill Renaissance Place auditorium.
Before next June, the plan must be adopted by the seven-member committee and ratified by the county commissioners, Youngs-town City Council and governing bodies of communities representing 60 percent of the county’s population, with Youngstown counting toward the 60 percent under state law.
Robert Orr, Springfield Township trustee, said he opposes the plan’s proposal to cut the county recycling division’s funding for county health-department landfill inspections and well-water testing near landfills from $400,000 to $300,000 annually beginning in 2015.
County Health Commissioner Patricia Sweeney suggested that all programs funded by the recycling division take an across-the-board 1.8 percent funding cut to give the division a balanced budget.
The county recycling division’s income from landfill dumping fees has declined in recent years due to reduced landfill use, which has stemmed from increased recycling and fewer items having been bought and discarded during the economic recession, said Jim Petuch, county recycling director, who retires Dec. 31.
The plan calls for a recycling division budget of more than $2.8 million in 2013.