BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON -- More than 150 opponents of a proposed landfill expansion packed into a late-evening Warren County zoning meeting Wednesday that ended with no decision.
Opponents of the proposed Bigfoot II landfill in Union Township far outnumbered supporters in the crowd that came to see how the five-member Warren County Rural Zoning Commission would vote on a zoning variance that would allow the facility.
About 10:20 p.m., after several hours of a public meeting, the commission adjourned without taking a vote on whether to recommend rezoning to Warren County commissioners. Commissioners are to take a final vote on the proposed new waste site within two months. The zoning commission will reconvene the public meeting Wednesday for a vote. That vote is only a recommendation and not binding on county commissioners.
"I'm pleased with the turnout," Warren Reed, president of the Morrow Environmental Preservation Association (MEPA), said early in the meeting.
"They have a couple of fancy presentations to make that are going to take a long time," Mr. Reed said as the meeting continued. "The bottom line is, the majority of people in Warren County do not want another landfill in Warren County."
But the local head of Browning-Ferris Industries of Ohio Inc. (BFI), which is proposing the landfill expansion, countered that many of the claims of health hazards from landfill opponents were "a lot of stuff that is exaggerated and sometimes inaccurate. "Landfills are needed," said Rob Dolder of BFI. "There are a wide range of unproven claims. . . . I doubt if this meeting . . . will be any different," he said.
Last week, the Warren County Regional Planning Commission voted 8-1 against recommending the waste site to the zoning board. The same regional planning officials had also rejected a similar proposal by BFI in July.
Warren County, the second-fastest growing among Ohio's 88 counties, currently has one landfill. The Bigfoot Run landfill will reach capacity and close in May, and BFI contends that sending solid waste out of Warren County would be too costly to residents and leave them open to price gouging by other waste disposal companies. MEPA chairwoman Ruth MacKenzie has complained that BFI has deceived those Union Township residents near the current Bigfoot Run landfill who moved near the waste site with the understanding that the facility would soon close, not expand as BFI now wants.
"Everybody had been building their activities there with the knowledge that BFI was closing the landfill in 1999," said Ms. MacKenzie.
Pam Jones doesn't live close to Bigfoot Run landfill but nevertheless opposes any new landfill. The Harlan Township resident said Warren County may need many things to accommodate the county's fast growth but another landfill, regardless of the location, isn't one of them.
"Our concern is that Warren County has already done its fair share as far as landfills are concerned," said Ms. Jones of BFI's fallback plan to locate a new landfill in Morrow should county commissioners reject their Bigfoot expansion plans. "We're not willing to sacrifice other residents in Warren County for their expansion," said Ms. Jones.
If the landfill is approved by county commissioners, BFI officials then have to apply for a zoning application and submit a site plan, both of which must be approved by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
If BFI wins both county and state approval, the Bigfoot II landfill could be operational during summer 1999.
