Landfill odors could hinder city’s plans
West Carrollton fears smell at Dayton landfill hurts redevelopment.
West Carrollton officials fear the city’s riverfront redevelopment plans will be hurt if a Dayton landfill’s odor issues are not resolved.
— West Carrollton WEST CARROLLTON officials fear the city’s riverfront redevelopment plans will be hurt if a Dayton landfill’s odor issues are not resolved.
The city’s long-range plans to create a multi-million dollar entertainment district along the Great Miami River may be “significantly impacted” if odor issues at Stony Hollow Landfill continue, according to West Carrollton City Manager Brad Townsend.
West Carrollton is among at least nine communities – Dayton, Kettering and Miami Twp. among them - from which hundreds of odor complaints have been lodged since April 2016 against the Waste Management-owned site. The inability to resolve the issue has led to Ohio Environmental Protection Agency involvement.
The Ohio EPA has said the landfill has complied with its shortterm mandates and Stony Hollow has “made significant progress” in moving to resolve the issue, according to a Waste Management spokeswoman.
The Montgomery County Solid Waste District, which hauls some of its trash to Stony Hollow, is asking the state to take stronger action with the landfill when the agency issues long-term orders in the coming weeks.
Townsend told West Carrollton City Council last week “we all need to step up ..... and start pressing for a solution. We’ve got a vision for our riverfront where we’re going to invest millions of dollars” and “this is going to impact it if there’s not a solution.”
The city’s riverfront vision was aided in 2014, when West Carrollton received state approval for a community entertainment district for the area along East Dixie Drive. In recent months the city bought a 0.23-acre lot on the riverfront next to a larger piece of property it owns.
While no builder has been identified for the West Carrollton riverfront project, the unresolved odor issues at Stony Hollow “are not going to be conducive to riverfront development,” Mayor Jeff Sanner said.
Sanner’s comments come less than a week after a county solid waste panel rejected a request by Moraine City Manager David Hicks to stop sending trash to Stony Hollow until the odor issues have been resolved. Under its current contract with Waste Management, the county said shipping
trash to another site would be too costly.
Among jurisdictions impacted by the odors complaints, Hicks has led the effort in handling complaints and seeking a resolution. But as the number of those communities has grown — the county cited nine in a recent letter to the OEPA — officials from those areas need to share the load, Townsend said.
“So we need to get involved,” he told West Carrollton officials last week. “I told Dave (Hicks) that we all agreed that we’re going to start stepping up and to do our part.”
Those communities impacted by Stony Hollow’s odors need to apply more pressure to local and state regulatory agencies, as well as state legislators, West Carrollton officials said.