State says fire to be dug up

Putting out the underground landfill fire in Bella Vista will require digging the waste up, the state Department of Environmental Quality announced Thursday.

“The site must be excavated to ensure that the underground fire is extinguished and will not reignite,” the agency said in a statement released Thursday. “An estimated 175,000–225,000 cubic yards of waste will be excavated.”

For comparison purposes, if a football field including the end zones was dug out one yard deep, it would amount to 6,400 cubic

yards. Therefore, the amount of landfill to be excavated is estimated to be between 27 and 35 times that amount, figures show.

Firefighters discovered the underground fire at a stump dump on Trafalgar Road in Bella Vista on July 29. The dump is still burning.

The department has posted a copy of the proposed plan online and will take public comment on it until the end of the business day on April 5. The plan is at www.adeq.state.ar.us/bella-vista.

A contractor hasn’t been selected yet, according to the plan as posted.

Most of the waste in the landfill is expected to be wood waste, according to the department’s statement. This will be disposed of on-site using specialized “burn boxes,” the plan states. A curtain of air at each box will keep as much of the smoke as possible from rising and escaping, according to the department’s statement.

The smoke from the burn boxes is recirculated within the boxes and through the fire until almost all of the particles in smoke are consumed, according to the department’s plan. The alternative of hauling the wood waste to an approved landfill would cost between $11.3 million and $15 million, the department estimates.

The plan states a goal of getting the fire contained — restricted to within the air-curtain boxes — within 30 days of the excavation starting.

No projected start date or overall cost estimate is given.

“There may be up to five of these burn units in use at any given time, and the proposal includes a 24/7 operation in order to achieve the complete solution in a timely manner of approximately 180 days,” the plan states. Air quality monitoring will continue throughout the process, the plan states.

Soil, ash and any other natural residual material will stay on site, the department statement said, while metal, tires, construction material and any hazardous substances will be hauled away and disposed of off-site. “ADEQ would expect that excavation and sorting activities would be conducted only during daylight hours,” the plan says.

The site will be replanted with trees, grass and other ground cover native to the region after the waste is dealt with, the plan states.

In a related matter, Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers took questions about the situation in an interview in Springdale, hours before the Environmental Quality Department’s plan was announced.

The still-burning dump isn’t the only site where stumps and other debris from land clearings went into some hollow in Northwest Arkansas during booming times for construction, Womack said.

“Ravines and materials nobody wants have a way of finding each other,” said Womack, Republican and a former mayor of Rogers. Other towns in the region someday could find themselves in the same situation Bella Vista faces today, he said.

The situation also reveals a regional gap, a problem too big for a city to handle by itself but doesn’t cross the “bright lines” of qualifying as an environmental disaster needed to trigger a federal response, at least not yet, Womack said. That leaves the burden on the state until responsibility and liability can be sorted out in court, Womack said. He spoke before addressing a crowd of about 80 at the Springdale Noon Kiwanis Club at the Western Sizzlin’ restaurant in Springdale.

Bella Vista “Mayor [Peter] Christie has done everything in his power to remedy this situation. As a former mayor, I admire the way he has handled this unexpected issue,” Womack said. “But his city doesn’t have the money or the manpower to fix this and the civil process to make those responsible pay will take a long time. This is an emergency.”

Residents near the fire were urged in December to avoid prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors after an unhealthy air quality reading in the area. The state continues to caution people living within a half-mile radius of the blaze, although recent testing has shown air quality results in the “good” range.

Womack and other members of the Arkansas congressional delegation have talked with both the acting and regional directors of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, among others, about the situation. ‘There are some pretty bright lines about what it takes to get

the EPA involved, and those lines have not been crossed yet,” Womack said. Those requirements include factors such as high toxicity, immediate threat to human life, or permanent potential damage to the environment. The EPA is closely watching the situation and will react quickly if any of those triggers are met, he said.

“It’s on the EPA’s radar but not on their plate,” he said.

The state Department of Environmental Quality received $20 million, drawn from different state government reserve funds, to get work started on putting out the fire. The Legislature is meeting in regular session this year, making it possible to pass an emergency supplemental appropriation. The governor signed the legislation March 11. Site preparation already began before the act passed.

The cost to put out the fire and clean the site could be between $21 million and $39 million, according to state estimates. The state expects to recoup money spent putting out the fire from past owners and operators of the landfill, according to a spokesman for the governor’s office.

At least two lawsuits are already pending against prior owners and operators, according to Benton County Circuit Court records. The first was filed in November on behalf of Bella Vista residents

Curtis and Tiffany Macomber and their sons, Ezra and Trevor. Bella Vista resident Jim Parsons is also suing.

Defendants named by at least one of the two lawsuits include: Cooper Communities, the Bella Vista Property Owners Association, Thomas Fredericks, Fredericks Construction and Blue Mountain Storage; and Samuel Care Enterprise, doing business as Brown’s Tree Care. The state Environmental Quality Department is also named as a defendant in Parsons’ suit.