Saturday, February 06, 1999
Rumpke permits take years
Expansion plan aims for 2004
BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COLERAIN TOWNSHIP — Mapping out a strategy for adding 100 acres to their Colerain Avenue landfill, officials at Rumpke Consolidated Companies Inc. said Friday they hope to reach the end of the regulatory road by 2003.
They will start this summer at the Colerain Township zoning board, pass through the Hamilton County Regional Plan ning Commission and end with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). They expect to address residents' concerns along the way.
If all goes according to plan, the landfill expansion will be approved, constructed and ready to receive its first load of trash in 2004, said Rumpke engineering and environmental manager Dave Meyer.
That will be well within the time crunch Rumpke faces as Hamilton County's only active solid waste landfill. Company officials expect their current landfill, along with dumping space they are negotiating to acquire at a Monsanto landfill in Whitewater Township, to be ex hausted about 2008.
“We know when we run out of airspace, and we just backed up the time frame,” Mr. Meyer said. “We also wanted to make sure that as we went through this process, we allowed time to get input from the community. ... We want to encourage that and incorporate it.”
He acknowledged that not everyone will be happy with the landfill expansion — particularly those living nearby.
But Rumpke officials already have optioned or purchased much of the residential property around the proposed expansion area. The company owns all of the property at Hughes and Struble roads that it might use for a new $35 million corporate headquarters — including all but one lot along Breezy Acres Drive, Mr. Meyer said.
Owners Tom and Bill Rumpke are negotiating with owners of land along Struble Road that they would like rezoned as a light industrial development area. And they have offered to buy every property on Locharbour Lane between Struble Road and the landfill expansion area.
Locharbour Lane resident Dick Clark, who is also chairman of the Colerain Township land use advisory board, said he initially resisted selling. But once his neighbors began to sign deals with Rumpke, he be gan to see the sale as “inevitable.”
He plans to abstain from all land use advisory board votes taken on the project, to avoid a conflict of interest.
Mr. Clark said although he hates to lose his home, he does not want to stand against the greater needs of the county.
“Where would they go in the Tristate, if they didn't have Rumpke?” Mr. Clark said. “This is just clear logic” that the expansion is necessary.
Yet before the new landfill can become a reality, Mr. Meyer said, company officials must steer their proposal through the regulatory process:
• The plan will be refined and submitted this summer to the Colerain Township zoning commission, which will forward it to the county Regional Planning Commission for review.
That agency will review it with the county engineer, Metropolitan Sewer District, Cincinnati Water Works, Soil Conservation Service and the township fire department before recommending to the township that it either be approved or denied, said zoning process manager Todd Kinskey. The zoning change would finally be approved by the township board of trustees.
Although a project usually takes about six months to make it through the zoning process, Mr. Meyer said he would not be surprised if this lasted up to a year.
• In December, Rumpke expects to begin preparing its permit application to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Allowing 10 months to get those documents in order, Mr. Meyer said the application should be submitted in September 2000.
During that same month, an OEPA-imposed penalty preventing Rumpke from expanding its landfill will expire. That measure was taken in response to a massive garbage slide at Rumpke in 1996.
If the OEPA review takes the typical two to two and a half years, the landfill expansion could be licensed in late 2002 or early 2003.
• Rumpke would then begin the nine-to-12-month construction phase. The first truckload of waste could reach the new landfill in late 2003 or early 2004.
Although Rumpke has had its share of environmental problems, culminating in the 1996 slide that exposed 30 acres of raw trash to the elements, OEPA officials say the company is now doing fine.
Rumpke is still paying off $1 million in civil penalties for the slide, imposed as part of a September 1997 settlement with the county and state. The company also was required to hire a chief operating officer and an environmental compliance officer with experience in large landfills.
“They have demonstrated, in a short period of time, how well Rumpke can operate a landfill with the proper management,” said Dan Campbell, supervisor of the OEPA Division of Solid and Infectious Wastes, Southwest Ohio office.
Throughout the regulatory process, Colerain Township and county residents will have opportunities to air their views. The zoning commission, township trustees and OEPA each will hold public hearings. And the state agency also is required to take written and oral testimony about the landfill proposal before deciding whether it should be licensed.
That is likely to be the biggest variable, Mr. Meyer said.
“We don't know the magnitude of (opposition). We're currently trying to talk to people who we think might have a reason to oppose it,” he said. “We think that the plan we're putting together is a good plan, and we'll be able to address their concerns.”
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