Possible fire at landfill probed
The Akron Beacon Journal
PIKE TWP - A whitish glow showing heat radiating from the Countywide Disposal & Recycling Facility in southern Stark County posed an ominous image on the monitor in Larry Davis' airplane.
On the ground, nothing was visible in the darkness on Dec. 30.
But for Davis -- a Kent pilot who has conducted similar flights with his thermal infrared detection equipment for federal and state agencies -- the whitish glow in his cockpit was convincing evidence of what he has believed for months:
A huge underground fire is burning -- and growing -- at the landfill.
Such a fire could release cancer-causing chemicals into the air, could create a danger of explosions and, in a worst-case scenario, could threaten part of Canton's water supply.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Environmental Protection = [100.0]Agency announced that, based on reports of Davis' findings, it is launching an investigation to determine whether the landfill is burning.
The agency intends to look closely at Davis' infrared images and to hire a California-based expert on landfill fires for advice on determining whether there's a fire and how to deal with it.
The infrared evidence was "a concern... and alarming to us,'' said EPA spokesman Mike Settles.
The California expert, Todd Thalhamer, is expected to come to Ohio within weeks, said EPA spokesman Ed Gortner.
"Countywide meets all my criteria for having a landfill fire,'' Thalhamer said in telephone interviews with the Beacon Journal last week. "Professionally, I believe there is a fire.... But there is a chance that (the heat coming from the landfill) is a chemical reaction. But I don't think so.''
He added: "The bottom line is that I agree with your pilot.''
Another expert on landfill fires, Tony Sperling of Landfill Fire Control Inc. in North Vancouver, British Columbia, is also convinced Countywide is on fire.
"It's pretty conclusive to me,'' he said, after being contacted by the Beacon Journal. "It looks like it's really cooking big.''
Davis said the infrared images he recorded in August, in December and on Tuesday were similar to images from other landfill fires he has flown over and indicate that the Countywide fire is the biggest landfill fire he has seen in 10 years of flights.
"It was blazing away.... It was clear that it was a rather substantial fire underground from the fairly vivid glow,'' he said of the images.
He estimated that the area of the landfill that glowed on his monitor had increased 12-fold between August and December.
EPA, company stance
That prospect is what greatly troubled the EPA and led to Tuesday's decision, Settles said.
Over the past few months, Republic Waste Services of Ohio, the company that owns the 258-acre landfill, and the Ohio EPA had repeatedly said the problem was not a fire but an intense chemical reaction caused by water mixing with aluminum wastes.
The EPA has not changed its position, Settles said, but, based on the new infrared evidence, is looking into the possibility of an underground fire.
The hottest area at Countywide is in an 88-acre section where dumping no longer occurs. Thirty of those acres have been covered by a tarp in an effort to reduce odors.
Whether a fire or a chemical reaction is taking place there, it's producing temperatures high enough to threaten to melt a synthetic liner installed under the trash.
That liner -- an eighth of an inch thick, or as thick as a nickel -- is one protection that keeps chemical-laced landfill liquid called leachate from escaping from Countywide and threatening an aquifer that provides drinking water to 600,000 people in east-central Ohio, including part of Canton, which has a wellfield near Strasburg in northern Tuscarawas County.
Countywide, which is in Pike Township next to Interstate 77, is one of the largest landfills in Ohio and gets much of Summit County's trash. Each day, 300 trucks dump a total of about 6,000 tons of trash there.
The landfill has come under heavy fire in the last nine months for emitting foul odors of rotting garbage that have plagued residents of southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas counties.
The odor problems led the EPA to declare Countywide a public nuisance on Sept. 6, although the agency said the odors did not pose a health threat.
The landfill is struggling to keep its operating permits, and the Ohio EPA is expected to soon issue a recommendation to the Stark County Health Department on the landfill's 2007 license.
Dangers from a fire
An underground fire would create a dangerous mixture of gases threatening landfill workers and neighbors. Burning plastics could create dioxins -- a known cancer-causing agent and the key ingredient in Agent Orange -- and furans, a possible human carcinogen. Burning auto fluff -- from shredded dashboards and seats -- could produce deadly chlorine gas.
High levels of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, have been found in the landfill's gas-collection system.
"They've created a monster... and we've got what could be a true disaster,'' said Dick Harvey, who lives outside Bolivar in northern Tuscarawas County and heads Club 3000, a grass-roots group that has long opposed Countywide.
"We're not surprised at the possibility of a fire,'' he said. "It's something we've suspected and believed for a long time. We firmly believe the liner is in jeopardy.''
Said Tuscarawas County Commissioner Kerry Metzger, head of the Stark-Tuscara-was-Wayne Solid Waste Management District, which oversees the dump: "A fire is a huge concern.''
Misplaced priority
Thalhamer, the California expert, said the Ohio EPA and the company seem to have spent too much time trying to curtail the odors and not enough time investigating the underground problem.
An underground landfill fire, he said, is a smoldering fire, with paper products and packaging materials glowing like heated charcoal, not producing flames.
Thalhamer, who works for the California Integrated Waste Management Board, said Countywide shows all the key symptoms of a fire: higher levels of carbon monoxide, landfill temperatures in excess of 170 degrees, smoke, and greater-than-expected settling of the landfill.
A fire generally is present if carbon monoxide exceeds 1,000 parts per million, according to the Ohio EPA. Levels at Countywide have approached 8,000 parts per million, according to Ohio EPA records.
Temperatures at Countywide have exceeded 200 degrees and approached 250 degrees at the center of the landfill, according to company data provided to the EPA.
There has been little smoke at Countywide, but Thalhamer said that's not unusual because the dirt cover typically filters out smoke from such a fire.
In some areas of the landfill where the fire is believed to be, the surface has sunk 30 feet, EPA records show. Normally, a landfill might settle 10 to 15 feet.
Evidence against fire
Landfill manager Tim Vandersall said 167 gas-extraction wells in the 88 acres -- drilled last year to reduce the foul odors -- show no evidence of burned materials. That's the best evidence against a landfill fire, he said.
Kurt Princic, the Ohio EPA staff member who has been overseeing Countywide, said that when the 2-inch drill bit chewed into the buried waste, the trash did not burst into flames from the additional oxygen provided via the drilling, as might have been expected if there were a fire.
The lack of smoke also is evidence against a fire, both Princic and Vandersall said.
As for the synthetic liner, Princic said, the EPA does not feel that it has been exposed to the highest temperatures, though there is no proof of that.
The company has told the EPA that the temperature of the leachate that pools atop the liner at the bottom of the landfill has been recorded at about 120 degrees, Princic said.
Plastic liners experience early stages of melting at 150 degrees. The melting point is between 235 and 260 degrees, and complete melting occurs at 284 degrees.
The normal temperature in a landfill is 85 to 105 degrees.
Vandersall said the company and its outside experts are confident the liner is safe.
The liner is atop a layer of clay that also protects the aquifer.
Countywide's initial trash-burial cell is atop 10 feet of clay -- 5 feet of naturally occurring clay and another 5 feet that was hauled in and compacted.
Any leachate leaking through the liner would have to make its way through that impermeable clay before reaching the groundwater.
The only way to know if that was occurring would be from the groundwater-monitoring wells around the landfill.
Aluminum waste
Thalhamer said the aluminum waste that had been dumped at Countywide complicates efforts to understand whether a fire or chemical reaction is occurring.
"It is the nuance that makes this different from any other landfill fire,'' he said. "It's a very unusual circumstance, something we know very little about.''
After the odor issues surfaced at Countywide early last year, Republic Waste Services stopped accepting aluminum waste.
In November, the Ohio EPA issued a special advisory to all state landfill operators to take special care in dealing with such waste.
The EPA warned that aluminum waste can, when exposed to water, react and emit toxic, flammable and potentially explosive gases. These include fluorides, ammonia, methane, hydrogen, cyanide, sulfur oxides and acetylene, the EPA said.
The reactions of aluminum and water are capable of generating heat at temperatures between 200 and 300 degrees, the EPA warned.
Until a year ago, Countywide had recirculated its leachate through the wastes, and that may have triggered the chemical reaction in the aluminum waste that is buried throughout the landfill, the EPA said.
Keep water, oxygen out
Both the company's Vandersall and the EPA's Princic said that whether there's a fire or chemical reaction at the dump, the way to deal with it would be the same: keeping water and oxygen out of the landfill.
Thalhamer said the best way to fight major underground fires at landfills is to install a layer of clay up to 4 feet thick atop the affected area. The goal is to smother the fire by depriving it of oxygen and to reduce the temperature, he said.
That works 90 percent of the time, but it effectively shuts down the landfill operations in the affected area, at least temporarily, Thalhamer said. After the fire is out, the clay can be removed, and landfill operations can resume.
The only other options are to dig up the trash and extinguish the fire -- a costly and dangerous step -- or to injectliquid chemicals into the burning area,another expensive task, he said.
Davis, the Kent pilot, said he contacted the Ohio EPA and Republic Waste Services about his infrared landfill images last year, but there was little interest in them.
His equipment does not indicate how high the temperatures are at the landfill's surface.
"There's no doubt in my mind that it's a fire,'' he said. "It could be a severe chemical reaction, but I don't think so.... There's serious stuff going on under that landfill.''
