METRO DISPOSAL INC.


Old Gentilly Landfill is not the environmental disaster that was feared
Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune Posted: 11/06/2011 7:30 AM
		Just over six years ago, the gates of the Old Gentilly Landfill in eastern New Orleans swung open, and with New Orleans in ruins, it quickly became the region’s busiest dump. It was situated amid wetlands and atop an old city landfill that accepted all manner of waste, and environmental groups were aghast. It had an uneasy feeling of deja vu, they said: After Hurricane Betsy, New Orleans reopened the Agriculture Street Landfill, citing the need to dump a lot of trash quickly.

Over the next two decades, city and federal officials built a neighborhood and a school on top of that landfill, only to have it declared a Superfund site in the late 1990s — putting the city on the losing end of a multimillion-dollar state court judgment it still hasn’t paid, and leaving the federal Environmental Protection Agency with a $42 million clean-up bill. The environmentalists had what might seem like an unusual ally in their efforts to expose Old Gentilly’s flaw: The owners of the River Birch landfill in Waggaman, who stood to see their business increase dramatically if dumping at Old Gentilly were stopped or significantly curtailed. River Birch’s owners, Jim Ward and Fred Heebe, are now at the center of a sprawling federal investigation into alleged influence-peddling, though neither one has been charged. Hoping to head off another Agriculture Street, the environmentalists, led by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, took their case to court. Their lawsuits led to settlements that slowed down the pace of dumping at Old Gentilly and required the landfill to take various other measures to guard against ground and surface water contamination and the possible compromising of a nearby levee. The landfill, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality, became perhaps the most closely watched construction and demolition debris dump in the state. Now, six years on, the landfill is still open, though it’s taking in about 85 percent less waste each day than it was in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Though some environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, still see Old Gentilly’s existence as a mistake, the ecological apocalypse that some feared in 2005 has not come to pass. Unfinished work The original Old Gentilly landfill, which took everything from household trash to medical waste to car batteries, opened in 1960 and closed in 1986, four years after the state first adopted rules regulating landfills. The state Department of Natural Resources ordered it capped with three feet of impermeable clay. Between 1985 and 2004, the cash-strapped city earned repeated citations from the DEQ for its slow pace in completing that task. In 2002, the city applied for a state permit to open a construction and demolition landfill atop the old landfill, called “piggybacking,” to help cover the cost of closing the final section of the old dump. In December 2004, DEQ issued a permit for the debris landfill, and the city signed a contract with AMID/Metro Partnership LLC to operate it, guaranteeing the joint venture 97 percent of the proceeds. When Katrina hit in August 2005, the state still had not given the go-ahead to begin accepting waste. Among other shortcomings, Old Gentilly’s operators had not completed construction of berms and ditches to contain and manage runoff. They also hadn’t capped the last 17 acres of the old landfill that remained uncovered. And the site still needed fencing, and signs showing what wastes could be accepted. But DEQ, citing the hurricane, allowed trucks to start rolling in on Oct. 2, 2005, 34 days after the storm. Reaction to the order was swift, and came from a variety of directions. The Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a Baton Rouge-based umbrella environmental organization, filed suit in state court on Oct. 31, asking that the landfill be shut down. It charged that the huge amounts of waste would squeeze toxic chemicals and contaminated water from the old landfill beneath. LEAN also warned the weight of the wastes might cause the nearby hurricane levee to fail. And the group said that the city and AMID/Metro Partnership had not met a state regulation requiring them to set aside money to properly cap and close the landfill at the end of its life, and monitor it afterward. Meanwhile, representatives of River Birch were lobbying federal and state officials, arguing that the wastes — worth tens of millions of dollars in “tipping” fees — should be sent to existing, properly permitted landfills like River Birch. The lobbyists also worked on representatives of environmental groups. Darryl Malek-Wiley, a local Sierra Club official, said he was given at least seven helicopter rides by Rick Michaels, a consultant for River Birch, to view Old Gentilly and other landfills. Malek-Wiley said he understood River Birch officials had a dog in the fight, but he just wanted a better view of what he and others already felt was an environmental hot-spot. “Hey, the Sierra Club didn’t have money to rent helicopters, and a lot of the stuff in New Orleans East you can’t see unless you’re in that vantage point,” he said. “There wasn’t any overt pitch, like, ‘Hey, if we close these down, it (the trash) will all go to River Birch.’ It was mainly, ‘This looks like it’s bad and a violation of the law.’ “And from what I saw, it damn sure was, and it still is,” he added. “They never said, you know, because you’re taking this copter ride, we’d like you to say x or y or z. They never said anything like that.” FEMA concerns In late 2005, FEMA wanted assurances from DEQ and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that Old Gentilly would not eventually be declared a Superfund site. If it were, FEMA or the Army Corps of Engineers would have to pay to clean it up, since they authorized and paid for the wastes to be dumped there. FEMA officials, who had also been peppered with questions from the White House Council on Environmental Quality, commissioned their own preliminary environmental review of the landfill. Their fast-tracked report, which repeated some of the same concerns raised by LEAN, was prematurely released and touted by River Birch allies, including then-state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero. It cited at least one new problem: That the garbage landfill beneath the new demolition debris was releasing so much methane that plans to burn vegetative waste could have caused an explosion. DEQ quickly responded to the criticisms, releasing an EPA report that found few problems at the site and a corps study that concluded the stability of the levees would not be threatened if disposal was done properly. DEQ officials also met with attorneys for LEAN and hammered out a settlement of the group’s lawsuit. It placed strict limits on how much waste could be disposed at the site each day, required groundwater and surface water monitoring, the installation of measuring devices called inclinometers to monitor the levees, and repeated checks for disallowed wastes. Later, the agency also ordered the landfill and the city to create a post-closure trust fund, which now contains more than $8 million. In the end, the strictures meant Old Gentilly had to follow the most stringent regulations governing a construction landfill in the state’s history. Thorough inspections Today, as trucks arrive at the landfill, their loads are checked several times for improper materials. Trucks carrying debris containing asbestos are turned away, as are household hazardous wastes, fluorescent light ballasts, electronics and other unpermitted wastes. The remaining waste — concrete, lumber, roofing tiles, and other construction materials, and some tree and vegetation wastes — is piled 20 feet high along a line that moves across the 200-acre site. Landfill officials say they have enough space available to stay open another 26 years, which could create a waste mountain 130 feet high. Monitors check for improper materials again as the trucks empty their loads along the face of the disposal area. The wastes are covered with 12 inches of clay at least once every 30 days. DEQ inspection reports indicate the landfill’s operators have done a decent job of keeping improper materials from being buried at the site. Along levees separating the landfill from the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, inclinometers keep track of any movements that might signal a shifting of the wastes’ weight. Very little movement has been measured along the levees. Surface water collected in ditches at the site during rainstorms is funneled to three small ponds. Instruments test the water for a variety of contaminants, including sediment; iron and other heavy metals; and chemical and biological contaminants. The landfill has had problems keeping within its permit limits for surface water contaminants, according to a review of seven years of DEQ records. Several times a year, heavy rains pick up sediment and iron that fail to drop out in collection basins before the water leaves the site. A few times, the monitoring equipment has measured chemical and biological markers that also violate the permit limits. Landfill officials have attempted to reduce the improper emissions by rebuilding segments of the ditches leading to the catch basins and planting vegetation that can capture the sediment. But heavy rainfalls continue to pose problems, according to their reports. DEQ officials have cited the landfill for those overages several times, but have not issued fines. They contend the violations are minimal, and that there’s really no danger of environmental contamination — the ditches run adjacent to illegal dumps that are probably more of an environmental problem, and the groundwater table immediately beneath the site is of poor quality and is not used for drinking water. DEQ officials say they’re keeping close tabs on the landfill’s continued problems with sediment and iron, but they said those problems are not catastrophic in nature. “In 2010, they began a project to reduce the TSS (sediment) concentrations,” said DEQ spokesman Rodney Mallett. “It helped, but there are still violations. The only parameters they have problems with are TSS and iron. These are the two least harmful to the receiving ditch along Almonaster Avenue.” Dana Stumpf, president of AMID/Metro Partnership LLC, which operates the landfill for the city of New Orleans, did not respond to requests for interviews for this story. A former DEQ official who oversaw the permitting process for Old Gentilly still bristles when asked about the complaints. “The real issue then was that we had 55 million cubic yards of debris and we had to find a place to put it and do it properly,” said former DEQ assistant secretary Chuck Carr Brown. “We had the Gentilly landfill in the heart of the destroyed area.” Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.