People used to call Tom Moreau and say, “Hey, listen to this,” and then hold the phone nearby while they retched and vomited.
Moreau didn’t get angry. He was worried for the health of the callers.
“Your heart goes out to them,” he said.
Moreau managed the Burlington Landfill in the Intervale from 1986 until it closed in 1989, two Burlington landfills in Colchester in the early 1990s, and the Chittenden Solid Waste District Landfill in Williston beginning in 1995. He is now the administrator of the Chittenden Solid Waste District.
The Burlington Landfill’s environmental problems got so bad in the late 1980s that methane gas accumulated in homes around the edges of the landfill, threatening the health and safety of the residents and prompting a lawsuit against the city of Burlington. That’s when Moreau, who already managed three wastewater treatment facilities, was asked to step in to fix the problem.
“Talk about being baptized by fire, that was it,” Moreau said on the phone this week.
So when Moreau saw the “improvement plan” Moretown Landfill Inc. submitted to the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) last week, it brought back some not-so-good memories. ANR asked Moretown Landfill to submit the plan for controlling garbage and landfill gas odors that waft through the surrounding neighborhood after it cited the landfill with numerous violations. It is expected to be some time before ANR decides if the landfill’s improvements are sufficient.
The landfill’s alleged violations related to off-site odors date back to 1999. Recently, neighbors say the odors have gotten a lot worse. They say they gag when they leave their homes, are embarrassed to have friends and family over, and can’t enjoy their property.
Last week, ANR Secretary Deb Markowitz said the landfill’s proposal for reducing odors would have to be on a “nuclear” scale in order for ANR to approve it, reported the Burlington Free Press.
In the improvement plan, the landfill proposes several sweeping changes, including an entirely new management team, $500,000 in capital improvements, and temporary tabling of its application to expand.
Perhaps the most important improvement is on the existing gas collection system. Landfill gas is produced when trash decomposes, and is made up of methane, hydrogen sulfide and other gases. Methane is flammable and hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs.
In 1987, when Moreau and his team of engineers were faced with a smell so bad that neighbors were dry-heaving in their own homes, the first thing Moreau and his team did was to drill deep vertical wells into the landfill, connect those wells with horizontal pipes, put a huge vacuum on the system to suck the gases out of the landfill, and then burn the gas off. They also sucked gas out of a series of shallower pipes throughout the landfill.
To maintain a strong suction on the landfill without letting in too much air, Moreau’s team put a temporary cover of clay on the landfill, which also helped reduce odors coming off the landfill’s surface.
Moretown Landfill proposes to do the same thing with a soil or plastic cover.
Will it work?
“When we turned that system on, I tell you, it was instantaneous,” said Moreau. “In a matter of hours, there were no odors. They never had another problem.”
Although Moreau was quick to say that he hasn’t been out to Moretown Landfill to inspect its situation, he did find the similarities “eery.”
“If you’ve been there — you know been there, done that, got the T-shirt — they’ve got the same situation I did,” he said. “I can tell you similar actions that I went through in Burlington, and we were under as much if not more pressure.”
But landfill gas is not the only source of bad odors. Moretown Landfill recently stopped taking in sewage sludge, one of the prime suspects for odors. (According to their improvement plan, that sludge has been “redirected” to another landfill owned by the same company). The Intervale Landfill stopped taking in sludge, too.
“That was probably my first call,” said Moreau.
Another source of odors is leachate, the garbage-infused juice that leaches out the bottom of a landfill. The Moretown Landfill offered no changes to that collection system.
Trash itself causes odors, too. The Moretown Landfill will begin dumping trash onto a smaller area, what’s called a working face, so that there’s less surface area to release odor. And it will move the working face to a flat area, which makes it easier to cover the trash every day, according to Moreau. Covering the trash every day is necessary to reducing odor and windblown litter.
Landfills typically cover the trash with earth, which takes up space and costs money.
“But if that’s what you gotta do to make the landfill successful, suck it up, that’s what you gotta do,” said Moreau.
According to Moreau, once people get sensitized to bad smells, landfills have to overcompensate to reduce odors.
“Boy, it is a tough climb to get out of that hole.”
Moretown Landfill is seeking to reopen a closed cell, which has settled over the years, allowing space for more trash. Moreau said if they take the cover off the cell and start adding trash, “I don’t think that would be a wise move.”
“I would suggest that they put a temporary cap in and let the vacuum system take care of the gas.” That is, cover the trash with clay or plastic and then put the newer trash on top. That way, old odors from old trash don’t escape.
The landfill has also promised it will stop taking in waste containing more than six percent gypsum in it. Gypsum, the primary component of sheetrock, is a major source of landfill gas.
“That is extremely important,” said Moreau.
Alleged violations also include improper handling of hazardous waste, stormwater pollution, inadequate cover of trash, and windblown litter. Neighbors say their homes have been damaged by the landfill’s blasting, which it does to get earth for covering the trash. Neighbors are also concerned about groundwater pollution.
Until the landfill submitted the improvement plan, it had offered no new odor management methods in response to neighbor complaints this year. Landfill employees already covered the trash daily and sprayed odor neutralizers on and around the trash. But the landfill made no move to stop taking in sewage sludge or gypsum, the stinkiest wastes.
Jim Dumont, attorney for Moretown residents Lisa Ransom and Scott Baughman, whose property abuts the landfill, isn’t happy with the landfill’s improvement plan. He says it suggests no measurable changes, no independent third-party reporting on the landfill’s activities, and no certainty of closure if the landfill does not live up to its promises.
In a Dec. 11 letter to Justin Johnson, deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, Dumont wrote, “The history of MLI’s [Moretown Landfill, Inc.] operations in Vermont is replete with promises broken, warnings ignored, repeat violations followed by more assurances, followed by more violations.”
Indeed, in the last 13 years, ANR issued Moretown Landfill nine notices of alleged violation, most of which cited odor problems, as well as other alleged violations repeated throughout the years.
Looking back at the Intervale Landfill, Moreau can say he and his team were successful. But those aren’t fond memories.
“We were desperate to make it work. I don’t look back at it fondly because did we make mistakes? Oh yeah. … There weren’t Cliff notes or a book to go through saying here’s how you deal with this. I tell you, it was not a fun project.”
