State reveals its dump-fire plan

Dousing underground blaze months away, official says

BELLA VISTA — An end to the underground fire in Bella Vista is still months away, an Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality official said Thursday.

Stuart Spencer, associate director of air quality with the department, gave a 30-minute slide presentation for residents to show the agency’s plan for containing the fire and excavating the site.

Firefighters discovered the underground fire at the closed stump dump July 29.

Officials from various state agencies handed out information and were available to answer questions Thursday after Spencer spoke.

Attending the forum were representatives from state departments — Environmental Quality, Health, Human Services and Emergency Management — as well as from the 61st Civil Support Team of the Arkansas National Guard and the National Weather Service in Little Rock.

Phase one work on the fire project started April 4 and should be done by April 26, barring weather delays, according to the Environmental Quality Department. The work includes building an access road to the site and a weir, or low dam.

Phase two work will begin soon after that. The goal is to have the fire contained in 30 days and to start digging up the site after that, Spencer said. Work will include sorting waste material, dealing with waste wood, removing waste that can’t be burned and then site restoration.

The state hopes to have all of the work done in 180 days, he said.

The department received $20 million, drawn from state government reserve funds, to get work started on putting out the fire. The cost to extinguish the fire and clean the site could be between $21 million and $39 million, according to state estimates.

The plan was looked at for its viability, the timeline to get the work done, the cost, further impact on residents and whether it was environmentally sound, Spencer said.

The site must be excavated to ensure that the underground fire is extinguished and won’t reignite, Department of Environmental Quality personnel said last month. Excavation will occur during daylight hours and in 12-hour periods, Spencer said.

Most of the waste in the landfill is expected to be wood waste, according to the department’s statement. It’ll be disposed of on-site using specialized equipment to keep as much of the smoke as possible from rising and escaping, according to a state news release.

Burn boxes will operate 24 hours a day, and up to five units at a time will be used, Spencer told the crowd.

Tom Judson, the Bella Vista Property Owners Association’s chief operating officer, has said the association operated the dump on leased land from December 2003 to Dec. 31, 2016, when it was covered with soil.

Nobody monitored the site the last few years it was open, but staff members would remove trash when possible, Judson has said. The property is now owned by Brown’s Tree Care.