Tag Archives: landfill

Spectra Energy fined $15 million for PCB spills at 89 pipeline sites –EPA



Those

PHMSA fines weren’t the half of Spectra Energy’s leaks and environmental
violations.
Do we want a record-EPA-fined pipeline company running PCBs through our counties?
Don’t we have enough
PCBs in the ADS landfill in Lowndes County
that’s

in a recharge zone for the aquifer we all drink out of?
Haven’t we already

imported enough hazardous wastes from the Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross?
Maybe the Lowndes County Commission should hear about these things tonight.

L.A. Times, 21 October 1989,

Pipeline Firm to Pay Record EPA Fine, Continue reading →

No contracts for tenants of Leila Ellis Building @ LCC 2013-10-07



Two, four, six, many:
that’s how Lowndes County counts tenants.
It’s great the county is providing space for organizations
that help the needy,
but it’s kind of curious that the county didn’t seem to know
who or how many organizations were using the Leila Ellis building,
and had no lease agreement with them.
Not to mention it took twenty questions from Commissioners to get
staff to admit that lack of contracts,
at Monday morning’s

Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

6.b. Leila Ellis Building-Available Space

Kind of like they have

no contract with the alleged county attorney.

Chad McCleod at one point said
two organizations are currently in the building,
LAMP and Cash Prosperity.
He said the County let LAMP use it, and LAMP let Cash Prosperity use it.

In response to a question from Commissioner DeMarcus Marshall,
County Manager Joe Pritchard said under normal circumstances
any organization would need to come to the Commission to ask for space.
They currently have more applicants than space.

Commissioner Crawford Powell wanted to know if the county was going
to set up guidelines for who could lease.
Pritchard said they could, and they couldn’t lease to a private business.

Commissioner Richard Raines wanted to know if annual leases were the practice
of this board.
Pritchard, not actually answering the question asked,
said “That would be my suggestion.”




JoTaryla Thomas
came up to speak for Continue reading →

Japan or south Georgia?

How is our local landfill like Fukushima?
No, not radiation: nobody seems to be responsible.

Colin P. A. Jones wrote for The Japan Times 16 September 2013,

Fukushima and the right to responsible government,



Rather, the means of holding a member responsible for bad judgments
are internalized as part of the rules and discipline governing the
hierarchy to which they belong, with mechanisms for outsiders to
assert responsibility — to assert rights — being
minimized and neutralized whenever possible.

Sure, it’s not exactly the same.
Our local governments live in fear they’ll get sued (or so they claim),
and even sheriffs and judges occasionally get convicted around here.
But it’s quite difficult to get local elected officials to take their responsibility to the
people as seriously as “we’ve invested too much in that to stop now”
where “we” means the local government or more frequently a developer.

And privatizing the landfills and

now trash collection is not that
dissimilar to the Japanese government keeping TEPCO afloat so they
have an unaccountable scapegoat for Fukushima.
Locally, nobody seems to even know, much less care, that the landfill
is Continue reading →

Waste from Superfund site in Waycross went to Lowndes County landfill

What was in that waste water
that went into landfill in an aquifer recharge zone,
with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River?
The 44 shipments from the toxic waste site in Waycross to the Pecan Row
landfill in Lowndes County were
“Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, but
“PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes”
and
according to the U.S. Department of Energy,
“To be a hazardous waste, a material must first be a solid waste.”
So “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids” apparently says nothing about hazard
or toxicity.


Cover
44 shipments went from the
“7 Out Site”
to “Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA” for $59,495.00 total
of your federal tax dollars paid to Veolia,
according to
pages 12 and 13
of

Final Report, Task Order # F-0032, Seven Out LLC Tank Site, Waycross, Georgia,
Contract No. 68S4-02-06
for
Emergency and Rapid Response Services, EPA Region 4,
Prepared By WRS Infrastructure & Environment, Inc.,
5555 Oakbrook Pkwy, Suite 175, Norcross, Georgia 30093,
May 2, 2006.

Is this where those
PCBs in the landfill came from?
EPA itself says,

Are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) regulated under RCRA as a hazardous waste?

PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes (Memo, Weddle to Verde; May 18, 1984 (RCRA Online #12235)).
However, it is possible that PCBs may be incidental contaminants in listed hazardous waste (e.g., solvent used to remove PCBs from transformers) or may be present in wastes that are characteristically hazardous. In these cases, wastes that otherwise meet a listing criteria or are characteristically hazardous are still subject to RCRA regulation regardless of PCB content.


Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA page 1
However, to avoid duplicative regulation with Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), certain PCB containing wastes that exhibit the toxicity characteristic are exempt from regulation under RCRA (Monthly Call Center Report Question; September 1996 (RCRA Online #14014)). Section 261.8 exempts from RCRA Subtitle C regulation PCB-containing dielectric fluid and the electric equipment which holds such fluid if they satisfy two criteria. First, these PCB wastes must be regulated under the TSCA standards of Part 761. Second, only the PCB wastes which exhibit the toxicity characteristic for an organic constituent (waste codes D018-43) may qualify for the exemption (§261.8).

Apparently any liquid wastes from a Superfund site would be
“Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, according to
U.S. DoE EH-231-034/0593 (May 1993),

Exclusions and Exemptions from RCRA Hazardous Waste Regulation,


Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA page 2

  • any solid or dissolved material introduced by a source
    into a federally owned treatment work (FOTW) if certain
    conditions, described in Sect. 108 of the FFCA of 1992,
    are met;

  • industrial wastewater discharges that are point source
    discharges regulated under section 402 of the Clean
    Water Act [§261.4(a)(2)]

If a Superfund site is not a federally owned treatment work,
what is?
And if the Seven Out site was not an industrial wastewater
point source, what is?


Sample waste manifest, Onyx Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA
The Onyx Waste Manifests on pages 75-120
say the materials were “Non-Hazardous Non-Regulated Waste water”.
(Onyx became Veolia Environmental Services in 2005,

according to Veolia.)
As we’ve seen, “Non-Regulated” apparently means little.
We don’t know what was in that waste water
that went into a landfill
in a recharge zone for
the Floridan Aquifer, the source of our drinking water,
and

with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River.

-jsq

Aquifer and well contamination miles from Waycross Seven Out Superfund Site

At the

Waycross Seven Out Superfund Site meeting,
caller Anthony Samsel said

(42 minutes and 10 seconds into the video)
of a site in Massachusetts:

I was the first person to track contamination of the ground to aquifers
that travel several miles; plastics, formaldehyde, from a plastics manufacturing plant,
and there was contamination of city wells
with a lot of cancer clusters
and a lot of sick, dead, and dying people.

He was talking about the Wells G & H Superfund Site in Woburn, MA, where,
according to EPA,



The groundwater was contaminated with industrial solvents, called
volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as trichloroethylene (TCE)
and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Soil on the five properties was
contaminated with VOCs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides. Sediments in the
Aberjona River were contaminated with PAHs and heavy metals such as
chromium, zinc, mercury and arsenic.

Thirty years later,

that one is still toxic.

In a

29 September 2011 coment
Samsel said Continue reading →

Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross –Joan McNeal for Channel 22



People are still getting sick and dying in Waycross after
Chemical company Seven Out closed and left a toxic waste site.
It’s now a Superfund site, which doesn’t mean anything has
been cleaned up.
10 out of 30 City Hall employees have cancer and 8 have already died.
Many living around the site are sick, and teachers and school children.
What will Georgia Reps. Jason Spencer and Ellis Black who attended do after that 29 August 2013 meeting?
Will action wait until more people die?
And to which landfill were those precipitated solids taken?


GA Rep. Ellis Black District 177

State representative Jason Spencer District 180
said the state health report should be finished in October,
and was quick to point to

Rep. Ellis Black District 174 as representing the specific area.
Rep. Black said they’d just heard about this and would be looking into it, and:

I’m a farmer from Clyattville….
I spent some time in the farm-supply business
and I have messed with agricultural chemicals all my life and
I’ve got a lot of experience there.
And I can tell you that I know firsthand
something about the danger and the challenges of dealing with these
really sensitive products
and how minute amount can cause problems.
And it’s something that’s Continue reading →

Landfill is in aquifer recharge zone

In a recharge zone for

our drinking water supply, the Floridan Aquifer,
is the Pecan Row Landfill




with its

PCBs and

coal ash.
That proposed

landfill pipeline requiring cutting through the vegetative buffer
along an unnamed tributary to Spring Branch?
Also at least partly in the recharge zone. Continue reading →

Landfill pipeline



Apparently

ADS’s landfill gas project
wants to take in methane from the closed old landfill, as well,
according to a public notice today that proposes
a pipeline from the old

Evergreen Landfill
to the

Pecan Row Landfill that has the natural gas turbine.

Nevermind
the

$27,500 fine for PCBs or
that

coal ash in the landfill that nobody on the Lowndes County Commission
or Valdosta City Council or Deep South Solid Waste Authority (SWA) can be bothered to check on.
Nevermind the

unaccounted for tipping fees
or
host fees.
I wonder if cutting through that vegetative buffer will let the coal ash and PCBs reach the Withlacoochee River more easily?


Location of proposed pipeline from Evergreen Landfill to Pecan Row Landfill

The yellow path indicated for the pipeline is just a guess.

In the VDT today,

PUBLIC ADVISORY NOTICE,

The proposed project located west of Valdosta, in Lowndes County, GA
along Wetherington Lane near the Pecan Row Landfill facility (2995
Wetherington Lane, Valdosta, GA, 31601) involves buffer
encroachments necessary to install a 30-inch gas pipeline. This
pipeline will Continue reading →

Landfill PCB violation

What hazardous waste was accepted at Veolia’s Pecan Row Landfill
that got a $27,500 fine from GA EPD this January?


Veolia is ADS now, the same company to which

Lowndes County granted an exclusive franchise for waste pickup.

We already knew that landfill accepts

coal ash from TVA.
What else is in there,
seeping into our drinking water aquifer,
and with runoff going into the Withlacoochee River?

According to

GA EPD,

Under authority of the Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Act :

Facility: Veolia ES Pecan Row Landfill/Valdosta; order issued to Veolia ES Pecan Row Landfill, LLC
Location: Lowndes County
Order Number: EPD-SW-2564
Date of Issue: January 30,2013
Cause of Order: Violations of Rules for Solid Waste Management/regulated hazardous waste acceptance; failure to properly conduct inspections
Requirement(s) of Order: Implement plan to prevent acceptance of regulated quantities of HW and PCB wastes at facility; ensure all employees handling waste recognize/identify labeled HW and PCB wastes at facility
Settlement Amount: $27500.00

According to

U.S. EPA,
Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB): Continue reading →

Tipping fees: no contract, no list of fees, no details of expenses

No copy of the contract for
tipping fees from the landfill it privatized some years ago,
no list of what those fees were,
and no detailed accounting of what they were used for:
that was the answer from Lowndes County’s Open Records Officer.
She also took more than 3 days to produce this non-information, answering
the day after the recent County Commission meeting.
Here’s her answer:


2008 CAFR page 38
From: pdukes@lowndescounty.com

Subject: Open records requests

Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:42:16 +0000

Good Afternoon,

In response to your open records requests of June 6, 2013, please
find the following:

For the contract or agreement addressing tipping fees, you may
contact Regional Commission Representative, Julia ShewChuk, at
229-333-5277. Lowndes County is not the custodian of this
information. You many find fee amounts in Lowndes Countys
Comprehensive Annual Reports located on the countys website,
www.lowndescounty.com.
To access these reports, go to the
Government tab at the top of the homepage, then County Manager,
then Finance, then Financial Reports. Fees are located on page 38
for 2008, page 38 for 2009, page 38 for 2010, page 39 for 2011 and
page 36 for 2012.

To be clear, Continue reading →