Landfill is not toxic, say city and La.

But opponents say tests practically useless

Saturday, July 01, 2006

By Gordon Russell

City and state officials and the operators of a controversial landfill in eastern New Orleans touted the results of new air and water tests Friday that Mayor Ray Nagin said "clearly indicate the landfill is not toxic."

But opponents of the hastily permitted Chef Menteur landfill quickly fired back that the tests were practically useless and proved no such thing.

The two sides have been squabbling for weeks about whether the landfill poses a hazard to the nearby Village de l'Est community, as well as the adjacent Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

While testing initially appeared to hold promise as a way of determining whether or not the landfill was benign, the promise wore off amid disagreements about what should be tested and how it should be done. The landfill's opponents, consisting mainly of environmentalists and community members, insisted that the only test worth its salt would be a test of the material in the landfill.

Supporters of the landfill, including regulators from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the operators, Waste Management of Louisiana, rejected that approach, suggesting that piles of debris slated to be taken to the landfill be tested instead.

No agreement was ever reached, and landfill opponents eventually disavowed the process.

The results announced Friday were of water and air samples taken by the city and analyzed by Severn Trent Laboratory in Kenner. Water was tested for nine parameters, and air was tested for 42 contaminants, officials said.

"I'm extremely comfortable that this facility is extremely safe," said Chuck Carr Brown, DEQ assistant secretary. "DEQ is fulfilling its mission."

All of the results, which are available at www.deq.louisiana.gov, were "below any health risk levels," DEQ officials said in a news release.

The opposition's response: So what?

"They refused testing of the actual contaminants being brewed in the landfill," said Joel Waltzer, attorney for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), a leader in the fight against the landfill. "The brewing takes time, and they know that. To announce to the public that we've proved that this is not toxic based on an air sample and a water sample is bunk science."

"All this proves is that the air and the discharge water are not currently toxic," said Paul Templet, who served as DEQ secretary under Gov. Buddy Roemer and is now a professor at Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment, as well as a member of a panel of experts volunteering its time on the landfill issue on behalf of LEAN. "The landfill itself could easily be toxic. They tested the wrong things."

Referring to the critiques of the water and air testing, Brown shot back: "If they said they didn't need it, why did they ask for it?"

Waltzer responded that his group has been most concerned with testing of the actual material all along. He said city and state officials offered to do air and water testing, and his group suggested ways to do it more effectively. However, most of their ideas were ignored, he said.

For instance, the group suggested testing the liquid, or leachate, running off the face of the landfill, rather than water pooled in a collection pond on the site.

The water that was tested "is just rainwater or non-contact groundwater," said Waltzer's law partner, Robert Wiygul. "The problem is that they would not allow testing or sampling of the leachate. This is like testing your swimming pool and saying that the test shows it's OK to swim in the septic tank."

Closing rejected

Waltzer also expressed disappointment with a meeting Thursday that included DEQ officials, local politicians and community leaders as well as Jonathan Hook of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice and Piyachat Terrell of the White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders Affairs. The latter two officials were brought in in part because the community around the landfill is heavily Vietnamese-American.

The two main ideas pitched by the community at the meeting -- closing the landfill until more definitive test results are available, and allowing the City Council to reconsider the landfill's zoning variance -- were rejected by DEQ, Waltzer said.

Brown said there was general agreement at the gathering, however, that the two sides would jointly select "an environmental entity" to study the social, economic and environmental impact of the landfill. Waltzer said community leaders were reluctant to jettison experts whose help they've already solicited.

"This is a very frustrating dance for the community," said Marylee Orr, LEAN director. "It's inconclusive by design. We're not getting answers to the community's questions."

Brown saw it more positively, however.

"I thought the meetings were productive," he said. "I think anytime you have dialogue, it's progress."

Little agreement

That said, it seems Brown and his opponents rarely agree on anything -- even facts that should be scientifically verifiable.

For instance, LEAN on Friday provided an analysis by geologist Paul Kemp of soil borings taken at the site in the early 1990s. Kemp's analysis undercuts previous statements by Brown that the site is lined on the bottom and sides with 15 feet of compacted clay.

Kemp said he found no evidence of such a liner, which, if it exists, would serve to keep liquid from getting into the water table. In fact, the 50-foot borings indicate that the soil at the site is silty and permeable, he said.

"It's not really well set up for containing liquid," Kemp said of his analysis of the site. "Anything you put in that's soluble or liquid will be able to migrate laterally or through the bed."

Waltzer and others have also questioned Brown's contention, saying that the bottom of the landfill, which is in a pit, is often full of water and must be pumped out, even when it hasn't rained in months. The water, they say, is coming up from below.

Brown disagrees, saying the water is rainfall, and its presence in the bottom of the pit is evidence of the impermeability of the clay liner.

"If there's any water in that pit, that's an example of how it's working," Brown said.

He calls Kemp's analysis of the soil "not accurate," and said that Kemp may not have realized that the top 3 to 4 feet of the landfill -- which were silty -- had been excavated since the borings were taken.

"He's just not accurate," Brown said. "The sandy soil he's referring to was excavated. I'd love to speak to him about that."

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