Federal agency enters debate over landfill

In a letter that echoes many of the concerns about a new landfill voiced by community and environmental groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has asked the Corps of Engineers to either require that a liner be installed at the Chef Menteur Landfill or to greatly restrict what can be dumped at the eastern New Orleans site.

Advertisement

The letter, signed by Russell Watson, supervisor of the service's Louisiana field office, is significant both in what it says and who is saying it. It seems likely to add more grist to the long-running debate over whether the hastily permitted landfill poses a hazard to the nearby community as well as the adjacent Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

Watson raises a long list of concerns, most of them familiar ones: that the large volume of home demolitions expected in New Orleans will mean that materials more noxious than typically allowed in construction landfills will wind up at Chef Menteur; that contaminants from those materials are likely to pollute area waterways and affect marine life; and that a hurricane or tropical storm could strew the debris now being piled at Chef Menteur all across the area, including the wildlife preserve.

"Given the scope and nature of the flooding events and the age of many of the buildings to be demolished and deposited in the proposed landfill, we believe that the delivery of materials containing numerous environmental contaminants . . . would be unavoidable," the letter says in part. "Placement of such materials in an unlined landfill, particularly within coastal wetlands, could potentially result in leaching and resultant persistent contamination of ground water, surface water and adjacent wetland habitats."

 

Commune with trash

The letter also notes that the landfill, when full, will result in a mountain of trash at least 80 feet tall, an unappealing vista for those attempting to commune with nature at Bayou Sauvage. As a solution, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposes that the corps require that a "vegetative buffer" be established to make the pile less unsightly.

The letter's source is perhaps as significant as its message. While it has no regulatory authority over the landfill, the Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal agency with no discernible agenda and may be perceived by regulators to have more credibility than the band of environmentalists and neighbors that have been fighting the landfill.

The letter is addressed to the corps, which issued an emergency wetland permit to the landfill's operators so that the site could open, but promised to fully review the application over the next few months.

Corps spokesman Eric Hughes said the corps would not comment on the Fish and Wildlife Service's letter because of litigation surrounding the landfill.

The Louisiana Environmental Action Network, LEAN, and Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East unsuccessfully sued the landfill's operators as well as various regulatory agencies shortly after the facility opened in April. During the mayoral runoff, the two groups persuaded Mayor Ray Nagin -- who used emergency powers to allow the site to open -- to close it temporarily so that the waste stream could be tested.

But negotiations over how to test the material going into the landfill quickly broke down, and the landfill reopened shortly after the election.

 

Testing vetoed

The landfill's opponents wanted to dig up a portion of the landfill itself and test the material, but officials from Waste Management vetoed the idea. Instead, state regulators from the Department of Environmental Quality, DEQ, proposed that scientists analyze the waste stream by observing trucks dumping at the landfill and testing debris piled at curbsides.

The groups opposed to the landfill called the proposed testing protocol a farce, and pulled out of the process. Instead, according to Robert Wiygul, a lawyer for LEAN, the groups are doing their own testing of debris piles stacked around the city. Those results should be available soon, he said.

LEAN's tests may be of limited utility, however, because state regulators and the landfill's operators will argue that whatever unsuitable materials might have been set out on curbs would have been picked out and removed by "spotters" at the landfill. Such materials are trucked to lined landfills in the area that must abide by more stringent environmental regulations.

Chuck Carr Brown, assistant secretary for DEQ, said Monday that he did not think the letter was of much significance, calling it "a letter from one individual that will be taken under consideration just like any other comment."

He noted that the Fish and Wildlife Service had not opposed a construction landfill at the same site when one was proposed in 1994, and suggested the earlier position undercut the recent letter.

"They've already gone on record saying they have no objection," he said.

 

Compacted clay

Brown also said the service was wrong in suggesting that the soils in the landfill were "permeable" and likely to allow liquids to seep into area waterways. In fact, Brown said, the bottom of the landfill is already protected by a layer of at least 10 feet of compacted clay -- a much thicker buffer than the law requires for construction landfills.

Requiring the facility to install a liner would be "totally inappropriate," he said.

"You have to treat this facility like any other one that's accepting construction and demolition waste," he said.

Brown said he believes regulators and the landfill's operators have made real efforts to allay community concerns about the facility. He said air and water tests of the site should be made public soon, and he said Waste Management went out of its way to allow observers to watch the operation of the landfill.

"I think the way we've worked together thus far has been pretty impressive," he said.

But the Rev. Vien Nguyen, pastor of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church and a leader of the fight against the landfill, called the proposed testing methods "an insult."

"How can it be a test when our experts cannot even leave the bus?" he asked.

Nguyen said he hopes the letter persuades the Corps to deny the facility a permit.

"I think we need to look at the whole debris situation more regionally," he said. "We need this debris to be brought to a place that does not impinge on the people around it."

The Fish and Wildlife Service letter could put the notion of testing the landfill, which appeared to have run its course, back on the front burner.

"Testing would certainly go a long way toward answering the questions everyone's got," said James Harris, a biologist with the Wildlife Service stationed at Bayou Sauvage. "But it couldn't be a one-time thing. It would have to be continuous."

"We certainly have not given up on the idea that what is actually going into the landfill is going to be tested," said Wiygul of LEAN. "It's hard to believe that in the United States we could end up in a situation where something like that is completely off limits."

. . . . . . .

Gordon Russell can be reached at grussell@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3347.