Tuesday, February 16, 1999
Planners to tackle Bigfoot
Both sides will observe meeting
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION TOWNSHIP — It was a Valentine's Day surprise that almost broke Bill Brausch's heart, and has since tested his will.
On Valentine's Day 1998, Mr. Brausch had three visitors to his Trovillo Road residence in Warren County. They were representatives from Browning-Ferris Industries of Ohio Inc. (BFI), owner of the Bigfoot Run landfill visible from his back yard.
They told Mr. Brausch that BFI wanted to expand the Bigfoot Run landfill, which is scheduled to close this May. He said they wanted him to sign a contract supporting BFI and retaining its trash-hauling services.
The reaction of the 20-year Union Township resident was one of shock, then anger.
Mr. Brausch had started to build his $250,000, two-story log dream house in his back yard and did so only because he expected Bigfoot Run to close by May 1999.
“It didn't make my Valentine's Day,” the anti-landfill activist said.
As of the one-year anniversary of that day, Mr. Brausch and others in Warren County have spent hundreds of hours battling BFI's attempts to expand Bigfoot, or build a new landfill in nearby Morrow.
Tonight, Mr. Brausch and BFI officials will attend a meeting of the village of Morrow Planning Commission, which is considering an application for rezoning of 222 acres for a BFI waste site in Morrow.
Village officials have announced that neither BFI officials nor those opposing the landfill expansion at Bigfoot and in Morrow will be allowed to present their case at the meeting.
The public meeting will instead focus on the planning commission's discussion on how it should conduct subsequent public meetings and whether it should hire consultants to help review the rezoning application.
BFI wants to build a landfill on part of the former Alpine Ski resort site in Morrow.
In 1997, Morrow Village Council passed an emergency ordinance that rejected the same zoning application. That action was unfair, BFI officials said, and led to a lawsuit against Morrow officials.
The village ordinance was later rejected in a partial decision rendered in 1998 by Judge P. Daniel Fedders of Warren County Common Pleas Court.
This time, the village council did vote to forward BFI's rezoning application to the planning commission.
After BFI's rezoning application for Bigfoot Run was rejected in December by Warren County commissioners, the company filed a lawsuit against the commissioners alleging that their application was not treated fairly. The lawsuit remains in court with no ruling date announced.
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