WEST CHESTER TWP. — An attorney representing officials cleaning up the Skinner Landfill has fired off a letter to Trustee Catherine Stoker warning her not to “trespass” on the site.

        If she does, she will face enforcement action. The May 8 letter, delivered to the township Monday via certified mail, accuses Ms. Stoker of putting herself and workers at the site at risk when she visited April 5 with Mark Fitzgerald, the township's services director. The letter says she also visited the landfill, on Cincinnati-Dayton Road across from Union Elementary School, once before without proper authorization.

        “On behalf of the Skinner Landfill Group, we are becoming increasingly concerned about Catherine Stoker's intentional disrespect for proper access procedures and the court consent decree's legal requirements for the site,” reads the letter, written by Laura A. Ringenbach, an attorney with Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP downtown.

        Ms. Stoker has been a watchdog of cleanup at the site. She and some residents question whether the landfill has been properly capped.

        She made no apologies for visiting the site and said this week she would do it again if necessary.

        “I have real concerns about how that project has been done out there and if I have to get out there and check it out myself, I will,” Ms. Stoker said. “The public ought to know what bully tactics the Skinner Landfill Group is taking. What do they have to hide out there?”

        The letter notes that Assistant Fire Chief Tony Goller, not Ms. Stoker, is the township's official representative on the site.

        But Ms. Stoker is welcome to come “with an escort if she is willing to comply fully with access procedures,” the letter says.

        Ms. Stoker said Assistant Chief Goller reported some concerns about the site, so she went to see for herself.

        “I am not a micro-manager. I am a trustee. I am responsible for the health and safety of this community,” she said.

        A resident, Fred Carroll, took photographs last year showing what appears to be water leaking from under the 78-acre landfill.

        A federal consent decree outlining the cleanup process calls for an impenetrable cover consisting of consistent clay, a thick flexible liner and 2 feet of topsoil.

        At a February township meeting, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency project manager, Scott Hansen, told trustees the cleanup was 99 percent complete and had been done according to consent decree requirements.

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