Records reveal EPA struggle
BY Paul Kostyu
The Canton Repository
COLUMBUS - Months before he showed up in Ohio, a California expert on landfill fires concluded there was an explosive situation at the Countywide landfill in southern Stark County.
“If waste producing own O2 (oxygen) may have O2 rich environment and BOOM!” said a note based on an Aug. 22 telephone conversation between California Environmental Protection Agency official Todd Thalhamer and Ohio EPA official Gina Gerbasi. “Asking for something to explode ... real time data is a must.”
Yet the new data wouldn’t come until February, after Thalhamer was asked in January to help the Ohio EPA investigate what was causing stench, heat and a section of the landfill to collapse. Though it contests that Countywide has an underground fire, its owner acknowledges that it has acres of underground problems caused by a chemical reaction among hundreds of thousand of gallons of liquid waste and hundreds of thousands of tons of a byproduct of aluminum recycling called dross.
GETTING A GRIP
Documents found in thousands of pages of records from the Ohio EPA indicate the agency never intended to close the landfill, but state officials struggled to get a grip on figuring out what was going on at Countywide. As many as 29 agency people were copied on some messages, and an 18-member “Countywide team” was formed and led by new director Chris Korleski after he came on board Feb. 1.
Five days before announcing his recommendation that Countywide be denied an operating permit, Korleski had made that decision.
“We plan to propose to deny due to a lack of substantial compliance. Todd’s recommendation (which arrived that day) will be considered but this is an Ohio EPA action. Does that mean we want to issue a death sentence to Countywide? No, we do not. We are not adverse to allowing them to get back into compliance,” read notes by a participant in a Feb. 16 conference call that included Korleski.
FIRE OR NO FIRE
Countywide’s owner had raised questions early about Thalhamer’s independence.
“He said there was a fire before he even left the state of California,” said Will Flower, a Florida-based spokesman for Republic Services. “In April 2006, when this (reaction) first came to our attention, we even might have thought about a fire because of the higher temperatures (in monitoring wells). We wanted to look at all possibilities and we ruled out a fire.”
Though the company initially cooperated with his investigation, that changed. In one e-mail, a company official said he wouldn’t do any more testing for Thalhamer because the Californian already had made up his mind against the landfill.
On Aug. 23, Thalhamer told Gerbasi that high levels of carbon monoxide in wells at Countywide meant “we have a fire. No questions!”
“No fire ... are they blind?” Thalhamer wrote to Gerbasi in a Sept. 21 e-mail. “20 ft of settle and temps at the well of 352F. Hummmm BBQ somewhere.”
And on Oct. 10, Thalhamer wrote, “This is going to get nasty. They are exposing kids to this smell.”
The tone changed a bit in January. Notes from a Jan. 31 phone call indicate Thalhamer “is not prepared to call it a fire.”
But in his report to Korleski, the EPA director, a few weeks later Thalhamer said there was not one but two fires under the landfill — one “a classic metal fire” and the second smoldering through municipal waste. The metal fire started “sometime around November 2005,” he said in another document.
Since Feb. 21, agency and landfill officials have been privately negotiating over what Countywide must do to keep its permit.
An announcement of that agreement is expected at the end of this month, according to Mike Settles, an EPA spokesman. The Stark County Department of Health is the permitting authority, and will have to decide whether to accept the agreement.
WHO CAN TELL?
Countywide contends the 352-degree reading was a mistake caused by faulty equipment. Countywide engineer Todd Hamilton said in a Feb. 12 e-mail the landfill staff was collecting “data with equipment that was less than ideal.”
In fact, they used at least three different measuring devices, two of which were “very cumbersome and not field-technician friendly.” The third was built in the United Kingdom using the metric system, “doesn’t hold up well in the harsh landfill environment,” and “additional spare parts, a replacement meter or a meter with U.S. calibrations will be next to impossible to find,” Hamilton wrote.
Thalhamer sent equipment from California. But an outside firm hired by Countywide to handle testing couldn’t figure out how to calibrate the machine according to the manual Thalhamer had included.
Thalhamer told EPA officials as late as Feb. 12 that “we are far from under control and the community is going to continue to need the local air district oversight to ensure the public.”
The Canton Repository
COLUMBUS - Months before he showed up in Ohio, a California expert on landfill fires concluded there was an explosive situation at the Countywide landfill in southern Stark County.
“If waste producing own O2 (oxygen) may have O2 rich environment and BOOM!” said a note based on an Aug. 22 telephone conversation between California Environmental Protection Agency official Todd Thalhamer and Ohio EPA official Gina Gerbasi. “Asking for something to explode ... real time data is a must.”
Yet the new data wouldn’t come until February, after Thalhamer was asked in January to help the Ohio EPA investigate what was causing stench, heat and a section of the landfill to collapse. Though it contests that Countywide has an underground fire, its owner acknowledges that it has acres of underground problems caused by a chemical reaction among hundreds of thousand of gallons of liquid waste and hundreds of thousands of tons of a byproduct of aluminum recycling called dross.
GETTING A GRIP
Documents found in thousands of pages of records from the Ohio EPA indicate the agency never intended to close the landfill, but state officials struggled to get a grip on figuring out what was going on at Countywide. As many as 29 agency people were copied on some messages, and an 18-member “Countywide team” was formed and led by new director Chris Korleski after he came on board Feb. 1.
Five days before announcing his recommendation that Countywide be denied an operating permit, Korleski had made that decision.
“We plan to propose to deny due to a lack of substantial compliance. Todd’s recommendation (which arrived that day) will be considered but this is an Ohio EPA action. Does that mean we want to issue a death sentence to Countywide? No, we do not. We are not adverse to allowing them to get back into compliance,” read notes by a participant in a Feb. 16 conference call that included Korleski.
FIRE OR NO FIRE
Countywide’s owner had raised questions early about Thalhamer’s independence.
“He said there was a fire before he even left the state of California,” said Will Flower, a Florida-based spokesman for Republic Services. “In April 2006, when this (reaction) first came to our attention, we even might have thought about a fire because of the higher temperatures (in monitoring wells). We wanted to look at all possibilities and we ruled out a fire.”
Though the company initially cooperated with his investigation, that changed. In one e-mail, a company official said he wouldn’t do any more testing for Thalhamer because the Californian already had made up his mind against the landfill.
On Aug. 23, Thalhamer told Gerbasi that high levels of carbon monoxide in wells at Countywide meant “we have a fire. No questions!”
“No fire ... are they blind?” Thalhamer wrote to Gerbasi in a Sept. 21 e-mail. “20 ft of settle and temps at the well of 352F. Hummmm BBQ somewhere.”
And on Oct. 10, Thalhamer wrote, “This is going to get nasty. They are exposing kids to this smell.”
The tone changed a bit in January. Notes from a Jan. 31 phone call indicate Thalhamer “is not prepared to call it a fire.”
But in his report to Korleski, the EPA director, a few weeks later Thalhamer said there was not one but two fires under the landfill — one “a classic metal fire” and the second smoldering through municipal waste. The metal fire started “sometime around November 2005,” he said in another document.
Since Feb. 21, agency and landfill officials have been privately negotiating over what Countywide must do to keep its permit.
An announcement of that agreement is expected at the end of this month, according to Mike Settles, an EPA spokesman. The Stark County Department of Health is the permitting authority, and will have to decide whether to accept the agreement.
WHO CAN TELL?
Countywide contends the 352-degree reading was a mistake caused by faulty equipment. Countywide engineer Todd Hamilton said in a Feb. 12 e-mail the landfill staff was collecting “data with equipment that was less than ideal.”
In fact, they used at least three different measuring devices, two of which were “very cumbersome and not field-technician friendly.” The third was built in the United Kingdom using the metric system, “doesn’t hold up well in the harsh landfill environment,” and “additional spare parts, a replacement meter or a meter with U.S. calibrations will be next to impossible to find,” Hamilton wrote.
Thalhamer sent equipment from California. But an outside firm hired by Countywide to handle testing couldn’t figure out how to calibrate the machine according to the manual Thalhamer had included.
Thalhamer told EPA officials as late as Feb. 12 that “we are far from under control and the community is going to continue to need the local air district oversight to ensure the public.”
