Ruling on landfill appeal to take time
Attorneys and witnesses in favor of expanding the Eco-Vista landfill in Tontitown argue environmental monitoring there is effective and meets all legal requirements and that state regulators lack the authority to impose the more extensive monitoring called for by the expansion’s opponents.
Tontitown’s city government appealed the expansion plan approved by the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission. The appeal resulted in a three-day hearing before the commission’s administrative law judge. The proceedings wrapped up Friday at the commission’s hearing room in North Little Rock.
Administrative law judge Charles Moulton gave the two sides three weeks after they receive a transcript of the hearing to file additional legal briefs. He estimated the transcript would be finished during the first week in March. Moulton gave no indication of how long after that he would rule.
“I’m under the yoke of statutes and rules,” Moulton told the parties as the hearing wrapped up. “I can’t go beyond it.”
The hearing began with testimony Wednesday from an expert witness for Tontitown who said the testing regimen at Eco-Vista was inadequate. He called for testing wells farther out to check for pollution in groundwater and for more testing of streams.
Moulton heard testimony Friday from environmental engineer Melissa Vaught of the FTN Associates engineering firm in Fayetteville that the testing of water runoff at Eco-Vista complies with state standards. Jodi Reynolds-Coffelt of Russellville, environmental protection manager at WM Inc., which owns the landfill, also testified about the monitoring system and how it meets state standards. WM was previously known as Waste Management Inc.
Ross Noland, attorney for Tontitown, disputed the claims of the landfill meeting state standards, particularly in the area of controlling fires breaking out at the landfill and in preparing a disaster plan in case of a major fire there.
Reynolds-Coffelt also testified the number of complaints about noxious odors to state regulators about the landfill went from seven in the four years or so before the permit for expansion to hundreds after the permit was issued for an expansion that would extend the landfill’s useful life and operations. According to her testimony, the number of complaints in 2019 through 2023 went up to 186 from seven in the same number of years before the expansion permit. Of those 186 complaints, 102 came from six people including 71 from two people, she said.
Testing by the Arkansas National Guard at the request of the state Division of Environmental Quality did find noxious gas in air samples near the landfill, with results reported in January. The results led to a request by the division for the guard to conduct more extensive testing. When those tests will take place or if they already have has yet to be announced.
The specific expansion being appealed is for a 155.8-acre increase of the landfill’s Class 1 portion. Class 1 includes nonhazardous household, commercial and industrial solid waste. Eco-Vista has been Northwest Arkansas’ only licensed public landfill since 1980.