Landfill issues unearthed
Work session reveals more questions, some answers
Page by page, Polk County Commissioners got a chance to clarify and ask questions about the contract with Waste Industries for operating the Grady Road Landfill.
Just like with the new Landfill Citizen Advisory Committee, the meeting left commissioners with additional questions and the need for further discussions to go over requested data following a more than two and a half hour review of the dozens of pages of the public-private agreement in a called work session.
To start off the meeting, county attorney Brad McFall went through a brief history of how Polk County’s landfill came to be under Waste Industries management from when the old property across from the Grady Road Landfill was closed to present day.
He went back to his opening days as an attorney to the late 1980s, when the county commission began pursuing a plan to open a new landfill under current regulations and operate it under the local government with the help of funding from a Special Purpose, Local Option Sales Tax.
Voters in the early 1990s approved that SPLOST package, which also helped build the current version of the Polk County Jail.
McFall said that it was discovered after the first cell was set to open for use that work hadn’t been completed correctly by the contractor and a Subtitle D permit couldn’t be obtained, which forced the county into a lawsuit with the engineering firm and contractor and the additional spending on construction of two new cells while the first was being repaired.
“They build these cells, the subase is basically concrete, but concrete made from screened soils that’s compacted significantly, and there’s a liner placed over it, and they have to be inspected and permitted before you can put garbage in it,” he said. “Apparently whoever the contractor was at that time had simply buried construction debris under the liner instead of compacted soil. I can remember after that lawsuit started there was a meeting at the landfill with video cameras, lawyers, contractors and the county was out there with a big scoop bucket truck that dug down to the liner and we cut it, peeled it back and pulled out tree stumps and crushed construction barrels and it was just like, wow. There was a big problem with that landfill.”
At that time, the county hauled garbage via a transfer station built on the property due to a “question of what to do with our garbage,” McFall said, while the board at the time considered their options.
“While we wre transferring this garbage out of county, we proceeded to build two more cells if memory serves,” McFall said. “Because the plan was that we would continue to maintain our own landfill and bury our garbage here locally with the thought that it would be cheaper than weighing it, loading it into trucks, and shipping it 60 miles somewhere to Alabama.”
The contract for a public- private agreement came after the issues were worked out with constructing the two new cells, questions were raised as to whether it would be cheaper to run it through the county, or to look at other options.
“Sometime in the mid to late 1990s, there was actually a decision to hire a consultant to help us determine what to do,” McFall said.
McFall said that it was before he was county attorney, but that he was well involved in the process at the time through his firm and “remember vividly like it was yesterday when Billy Croker and Bud (?) were sitting next to each otehr and we had a lined subtitle D cell to put garbage in and in the middle of this footprint where we have the landfill now was this transfer station.”
“And they got into an argument at the meeting over whether we’re going to run our own landfill or are we going to ship our garbage somewhere else? ‘And why in the heck did we build a transfer station in the middle of the footprint?’,” McFall said.
“Of course I was still very young at this point and didn’t think much about it, but I remember that debate happening.”
The board brought in a consultant at the time in the early 2000s to give commissioners a better idea of what could be done with the landfill at the time, and eventually the concept for the public-private agreement was conceived.
“We were losing significant money in the operations business,” McFall said. “And the decision was made to enter into this public-private partnership with a company that was then called ETC of Georgia.”
Enter Enviornmental Trust Company, or ETC.
Back when the opening agreement was made in 2002, that company was ETC. The agreement modified in 2005 is the one that remains in place today, and though ETC’s name is still all over the contract McFall said Waste Industries owns the company and thus took over the legal responsibilities for the life, closure and post-closure of the landfill.
“I remember the comment being made by the board at the time that though we have these Subtitle D lined cells prepared, the moment we put one truckload of garbage in there it was ours for life,” McFall said. “That created a lot of trepidation I think among the board, did we really want to get into that business, and the decision at that time was no.”
He said the agreement was made, and “as everyone knows now, we have a regional landfill that was always pitched to the county and told to the county that in order to make the landfill operation manageable from a financial perspective, we have to take out of county waste. So that’s where we are.”
Many articles have covered these issues in both the Cedartown Standard and Rockmart Journal over the years, archives of which are available in records kept at the Cedartown and Rockmart libraries on microfilm, or online at Polkstandardjournal.com.
After McFall’s brief overview of the history of the landfill, county commissioners got to ask a variety of questions on the contract.
Though many areas were covered, certain aspects of the agreement that was last restated in August 2005 with what is now Waste Industries were delved into more than others.
Among those were money matters, what’s going into the landfill and what the next step in the conversation is needed about the agreement put in place more than 11 years ago.
Money matters
Understanding operations at the landfill on a larger scale within the terms of the agreement requires first a general overview of how garbage left on the curbside once a week ends up buried in the ground at Grady Road.
The variety of things thrown away in the home are tossed in trashbags and typically picked up by one of two groups: municipal public works employees specifically hired as trash collectors who have trucked owned and maintained by a local government, or private trash haulers who manage the contracts, collections and costs on their own without.
In Polk County, trash service is either handled by the local government or via private contracts as haulers vie for business.
Polk County public and private trash trucks can drive directly to the dump and over the scales, be weighed, and then deliver their loads to the landfill’s open face to be compacted into the cell and later buried and covered over.
Those haulers are charged fees by the ton in agreements worked out with Waste Industries for how much it will cost to dump at the Grady Road Landfill, with costs varying depending on the contracts made with each company.
In the agreement, Polk County has to pay for the tonnage they dump as well.
The county pays Waste Industries, for instance, to handle garbage collections from the convenience centers provided for residents who reside within the county - and some with special permits who are property owners. They run the dumpsters across the scales, and annually the county pays Waste Industries some $270,000 to $280,000 for getting rid of local resident’s trash via the convenience centers.
However, within the contract Waste Industries is expected to go out and find contracts for more waste to be taken in at the Grady Road Landfill from elsewhere.
Enter transfer stations, which the county once employed themselves as a place to keep trash before it could be hauled away elsewhere. The Grady Road Landfill has contracts with nine different transfer stations, each bringing in a variety of tonnages of trash per month which Waste Industries charges based off their negotiated rates with each one.
So in the agreement as it was restated and amended in past years, when the Grady Road Landfill takes in a ton of trash each day from outside sources Polk County gets $4 for each ton up to 1,000.
After that, the county gets $2 a ton until a 4,000 ton limit, when it goes back to $ 4 a ton for every ounce of garbage that comes into the landfill after the limit is reached in a day.
County manager Matt Denton said during the meeting that typically the average tonnage coming into the landfill per day is on average between 2,500 and 2,600 tons.
There’s other money moving around as well. The county gets $5,000 a month in rental fees for the old building that was the heart of the Grady Road Landfill transfer station, now moved and being re-used as a maintenance shed for Waste Industries equipment.
The company also gives the county $ 10,000 annually that is then turned over to Keep Polk Beautiful as part of an agreement to help provide for local environmental education efforts.
Some other money is involved as well, but on as an if-needed collection of funds kept aside in credit for covering the cost of closure.
“They calculate inflation rates and they revise those numbers annually,” he explained. “It’s standard business practice with EPD to put up assurity that the work will be executed.”
Denton said this essentially works like a performance bond, but with changes in the tonnages also comes changes in the annual calculations.
The letter of credit would only go into effect should the county need it which right now totals up to approximately $6.3 million, according to Denton.
He said the state EPD adjusts the amount annually based in inflation and “some other factors” to provide an estimate of how much the county would spend having to completely close the facility without Waste Industries help.
The important thing to remember is this money is set aside and will continue to change from year to year, but isn’t ever intended to be used.
Instead, in the public- private agreement with Waste Industries they bear the costs of closure and post- closure procedures at the Grady Road Landfill when eventually it’s permitted space is all used up. There’s still 200 feet of airspace left to fill at the landfill.
Another important point Denton said he couldn’t readily explain was money moving around between the county and Waste Industries back and forth.
He said the way money moves back and forth from the county commission to Waste Industries is somewhat difficult to understand, but that when the contract was initially negotiatied it was the way parties on both sides decided to handle the issue.
One area that has been costly to the county in the past is how trash is handled at the landfill itself. If a resident has less than five bags of trash, they are supposed to be able to drop it off in a convenient location at the dump, but instead of having it handled like they would waste coming in from the convenience centers it has been charged by the half ton, increasing the costs to the county in how much they are charged by Waste Industries to handle in-county waste by as much as $30,000 in the FY 2016 budget.
That’s just the brief version of financials involved in the landfill.
What goes in doesn’t come out
Something McFall said earlier in the meeting was right: once the county put its first bag of trash into the Grady Road Landfill, the facility officially owned it.
What’s being put into the landfill, at least based on the contract is defined by what the Environmental Protection Division allows into the facility.
However, Denton was quick to point out that “anyone can put anything into a trash bag and put it into a can.”
Commissioner Chuck Thaxton asked about a point in the contract laying out definitions of what is allowed and isn’t allowed to be dumped into the landfill, which on the list of items not allowed is hazardous and certain types of medical waste.
He pointed out that based on his experience with emergency medical services in the county that hospitals aren’t allowed to dispose of items that might be able to contaminate, such as swabs used in an operating room or used needles disposed in biomedical waste containers.
Typically, those items are incinerated and don’t make it to any landfill.
Denton also said that based on what the permit for the landfill allows from EPD, the county is only supposed to take municipal solid waste and other household materials, can take construction debris and those materials though they are hard to crush down, and have to set aside items like tires and certain types of appliances since they aren’t allowed to go in.
Refrigerators and freezers aren’t allowed, for instance, since there’s the potential for freon to leach into the waste when compacted in and add contaminants to the air when the lines are breeched.
However, since workers at the landfill can’t tell what’s in every bag of trash being compacted on the what is called the “work face,” or the open area where trash is being buried, Denton had to admit anything could be going into those bags.
“So it’s really to the best of their ability?” Tillery asked.
To which Denton responded simply “that’s what it should say” in reference to the agreement.
“Like any other business, when you’re dealing with it, and it’s something that no one wants to deal with and that’s waste. That’s why it’s called waste. If someone wants badly enough to get rid of something, and try to get it past the scales at the landfill, can it happen? Sure it can,” said McFall. “It’s not a risk-free situation. But the good news is that landfills today are lined, and the liner absolutely keeps any materials from entering the subsurface.”
Denton added that the contract the staff are trained to recognize hazardous or infectious items that may be exposed when on the working face at the landfill, which they are required to immediately stop work and contain it, remove it and try to track down who brought it in.
Tires were one area specifically covered in the meeting. Denton said he believed they were taken in, stored and then transported elsewhere for disposal after a question about that and dead animals was brought up by Hulsey.
Dead animals are another area of issue, since they are allowed to be part of the waste but fall out of any particular category.
The county has limited in the past certain things they didn’t wish to take in anymore. For instance, the sludge leftover from wastewater treatment plants taken in by the landfill was refused in years past from Cobb County following complaints over the smell.
Closure and post closure
conversation
Though it is estimated that there are more than two years of space left at the Grady Road Landfill, the county commission will likely be holding a discussion over what that means when eventually the facility is completely covered by layers of liner and clay and monitored for 30 years.
Wells are dug and tested twice a year currently around the site to ensure there’s no groundwater contamination from either from leachate or methane already in place, and as more will be drilled for the gas collection system as the airspace continues to rise another 200 feet before the landfill closes in 28 years based on currently available estimates provided by Denton.
Based on the questions from commissioners, there’s still plenty of more material to cover before anyone has a full understanding of the landfill operations and contract.
Also too there will be some work for the county commission to undertake as they have to decide whether to reinstate an environmental committee referred to in the contract based on a question by Tillery.
The committee hasn’t met in more than 8 years.
Commissioners also requested more data, including more detailed reports on monthly tonnages, audits from Waste Industries and copies of the permits allowing the landfill to operate.
Commission chair Marshelle Thaxton after the more than two and a half hour meeting that the board should gather again - whether at their next work session or a seperate date wasn’t clear - to go over what those processes mean and what responsibilities both parties hold in the process.
“We understand this a lot better, and we know we’ve got a lot more to go through,” he said. “We’ve got problems and we’ve got opportunities, and I think it will take several meetings and negotiations for us to hash it all out.”
Hulsey said her three main concerns at this point were centered around the annual tonnage coming into the landfill per year, odor issues and litter being left on the side of the road.
“To me those are the three top items we now need to address,” she said.
Though no imminent contract negotiations are yet in the works, one area the county commission could vote on soon is an amendment to the agreement on how closure costs are calculated and that money is invested annually.
Check back for more on landfill issues in coming editions of the Standard Journal as this story continues to develop.