Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003290747
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COVINGTON LENGTH: Medium
So far, the dump's owners have paid just $54,286 into a post-shutdown fund required by the state.
County Attorney Wayne Heslep said Wednesday that owners of the controversial dump are to pay about $500,000 into the fund by May. But he said the payment schedules set up by the state last year are too low.
The state did not figure on last year's huge increases in garbage at the private landfill, Heslep said.
Daily cargoes of trash trucked from out of state have grown from 1,000 tons to about 2,500 tons, according to Heslep. He said the amount of garbage coming to the 48-acre Kim-Stan dump is greater than trash generated in all of populous Fairfax County.
In recent months, the dump at Selma just west of Clifton Forge has grown from a flat plain of garbage to a mountainous heap. The landfill operated quietly for 16 years, taking local waste, until new owners bought it in 1988 and began taking garbage from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The state Department of Waste Management will ask an administrative law judge on Friday to revoke the dump's license because it keeps leaking polluted water off the site. The 9:30 a.m. hearing at the department's central offices in Richmond could be the day of legal judgment that landfill owners have been delaying since last summer.
Earlier this month, Kim-Stan's attorneys at the Richmond firm of Hunton and Williams and its Ohio consulting firm quit working for the dump.
The consultants said the dump was a political hot potato that was hurting their prospects with other landfill clients. Hunton and Williams would not explain why it quit.
Wednesday, the landfill suffered another defeat when Alleghany County Circuit Judge Duncan Byrd ordered it to remove a pollution pumping station it had installed off the site. He said Kim-Stan violated the county's zoning ordinance when it put the equipment on leased land across Virginia 696 from the landfill.
Unless Kim-Stan appeals Byrd's decision, the landfill must dismantle the pump within 10 days.
Observers say that will almost surely mean more leachate - the toxic liquid produced when rainwater filters through garbage - will escape into nearby ponds and the Jackson River. "If the judge's order is obeyed, there will be massive discharges of leachate into the river," Heslep said.
He and other opponents said state regulators will have even more evidence that the dump cannot control its toxic liquids.
"It will start leaking eventually," said Tim Salopek, president of the former Kim-Stan consultants, Waste Placement Professionals. He said it was "crazy" that a judge would order removal of equipment designed to curb pollution.
The prospect of causing more pollution to seep from the landfill did not appeal to him either, the judge said, but owners clearly had broken local law. Heslep argued that pollution would continue with or without the pumping station.
"That means they have to keep that stuff back in the landfill where it belongs," said a jubilant Aggie Vint, one of the many Kim-Stan protesters who applauded the judge's decision.
Joe Roberts, Kim-Stan's new attorney from Wise County and brother-in-law of Jerry Wharton, one of Kim-Stan's owners, said the judge's order could cause the dump to shut down. He said he did not know if Kim-Stan would appeal.
Kim-Stan apparently won a legal round, too, Wednesday. Byrd indicated he would throw out a suit by county citizens who argued the dump should be closed because it is a public health nuisance. Byrd said actions against the landfill by state agencies seemed to supersede the county's case.
by CNB