The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - With low dumping fees and an abundance of open landfill space, Ohio consistently ranks among the five states that take in the most garbage from other states.

And three northern Ohio landfills have asked the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to raise the limit on how much garbage they can accept each day. Taking in more trash means more money for the landfill operators.

About 2.5 million tons of trash and another 2.8 million tons of construction and demolition debris were dumped in Ohio last year. Most of that waste goes to landfills in northeastern Ohio near the Pennsylvania border.

EPA officials said they will likely approve the requests by the owner of the landfills near Carey and Shiloh. Increased capacity for another dump near Fostoria has already been approved.

As long as a dump can handle the extra work and there's no threat to people's health or the environment, the EPA has little discretion, said Andrew Booker, a solid-waste management supervisor for the agency.

Richland County Commissioner Daniel Hardwick said he's worried the Noble Road Landfill near Shiloh will shut down years before it was supposed to.

"You go out and find a spot for another landfill and see how happy the neighbors are," Hardwick said.

Annual reports the landfills file with the EPA indicate that the dumps don't operate at the maximum rate every day.

Judy Brown said she worries that more train cars filled with refuse bound for the Sunny Farms Landfill will end up parked on the rails outside her Fostoria home in Seneca County.

"I just don't agree with this," Brown said. "That landfill should be for us."

Booker said representatives from Sunny Farms and Wyandot County Environmental Sanitary Landfill near Carey have contacted the EPA to discuss plans to connect their dumps to nearby rail lines.

The Noble Road Landfill takes out-of-state debris from a railyard in Mansfield.

EPA officials have been tracking how much garbage is brought from other states by train, an increasingly attractive method for dump operators because it's cheaper than trucking.

Allied Waste Industries Inc. has filed a request to temporarily raise the daily capacity at its Noble Road site from 2,000 tons a day to 4,000 tons. EPA supervisor Ellen Gerber said she expects Allied to file another request that would make that rate permanent.

Allied Waste also owns the Wyandot dump and has contacted the EPA about filing a request to increase its capacity, Gerber said.

In Seneca County, the Ohio EPA has already raised Sunny Farms' daily limit from 2,000 tons per day to 3,000 tons.

A copy of the state permit shows it would close in less than 10 years if it took that much garbage every day.