Landfill

The Harford County Department of Public Works will close its four satellite yard waste collection sites in Fallston, Bel Air, Churchville and Abingdon Sept. 30, the county government announced yesterday. "Faced with state budget cuts and the need to serve county residents, the decision was made to shut down the sites and instead provide extended hours at Scarboro landfill to serve residents," said Frank Henderson, deputy director of environmental affairs. Valerie Twanmoh, past president of Friends of Harford Inc., a grass-roots group that monitors quality-of-life issues, expressed concern that the closings could result in some people dumping yard waste along roadsides and other areas.

Howard County officials say they will likely spend up to $50,000 on emissions testing for a new generator that will produce energy from methane gas given off by Alpha Ridge Landfill, after neighbors raised concerns over how the project might affect air quality. The decision last week came after an informational meeting held in Marriottsville by the department of public works, which is overseeing the proposed combustion engine. "If they can't prove to me it's safe, then don't tell me it's safe," said one resident, Geff Ottman, during Monday's meeting at Marriotts Ridge High School.

Pimlico racecourse chose cheap-and-dirty over environmentally-responsible when it came time to "clean up" after the Preakness ("Preakness crowd big, but cleanup goes fast," May 17). I would bet at least 50 percent of the 100 tons of refuse carted off to the incinerator was recyclable. They wanted to get their hourly workers out of there as quickly as possible rather than do the right thing for the environment. As the worker interviewed in the piece said, she wished it had been possible to separate out recyclables.

Regarding Nicole Fuller 's recent article about Anne Arundel County's Piney Orchard community, I am strongly opposed to the Tolson Rubble Landfill ("In Anne Arundel community, growth runs up against industry," Oct. 2). First, the proposed site is situated in the middle of a densely populated area. It would be highly irresponsible to put a landfill, let alone a rubble landfill with fugitive dust emissions, in such close proximity to a residential area. Secondly, the refuse disposal application submitted by Tolson & Associates is based on outdated information.

In response to the article "Odor Complaints at Millersville landfill on the rise" (Jan. 31), I am writing to further inform readers about the ongoing efforts of the Department of Public Works in regards to our neighbors' concerns. Since January of 2009, during normal operating hours and non-operating hours, the Maryland Department of the Enviornment conducted 30 investigations relating to our neighbors concerns and only detected off-site odors on three occasions. They classified the odors as "very slight."

Frank Marion used to light candles to mask the odor. Marion, who owns a home about 300 feet from the Millersville landfill, has complained since 2008 about the smell of rotten eggs permeating his home on an almost-daily basis. Now, Marion and other neighbors say the odor has gotten progressively worse - stronger and more frequent - and is causing nausea, vomiting and headaches among some residents. "It has totally destroyed my life," Marion said. Last week, about a dozen of the residents met to discuss remedies: They are requesting that Anne Arundel County appoint a third party to monitor emissions from the landfill and to test the air and well water to determine if there are any contaminants.

Solar panels under construction at a long-capped landfill in Howard County will soon be used to offset energy costs at a nearby elementary school. The county began installation of the solar arrays this week at the former New Cut Landfill, an 83-acre tract in Ellicott City that shut down operations more than 30 years ago. Officials expect the $462,000 project will be completed in about eight weeks and the panels will begin drawing energy from the...

The Loading Dock, a nonprofit recycler of building materials, will be at Alpha Ridge Landfill in Marriottsville from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday..It will accept lumber, plumbing fixtures, doors, windows and other usable building materials.Information: 728-DOCK.

Changes at Northern Landfill scheduled to be implemented Nov. 30 will allow for better traffic flow at the facility, Carroll County Deputy Public Works Director Gary L. Horst said.The county has installed a second scale at the landfill on Route 140 in Reese, which will help prevent traffic back-ups, he said.Truck unloading activity has been concentrated at Northern since the county closed Hoods Mill Landfill in Woodbine this year.Another change is that recycling activities have been consolidated in one area at the landfill to make it more convenient for residents, Mr. Horst said.

Two couples who live near Keystone landfill may appeal a judge's ruling last week that the landfill is not responsible for water contamination on their properties.The privately owned landfill in Adams County, Pa., north of Silver Run, is the target of a lawsuit filed in 1987 by Timothy and Marcia Brown, formerly of Silver Run and now of Littlestown, Pa., and Cloyd and Dorothy Willow of Hanover, Pa. The landfill closed in 1990.Sylvia H. Rambo, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., ruled last week that the two couples had failed to prove that the landfill was the source of pollutants in ground water on their properties.

For years, Danielle Oldham checked housing listings, hoping that she, her husband and their two young daughters could find a place in the Anne Arundel County community of Piney Orchard. She researched the area meticulously, scanned county development plans and talked to residents before the family finally bought a town house there in January. Then Oldham got a certified letter with some brow-furrowing news: Her dream home lies less than 1,000 feet from the site of a proposed rubble landfill.

Solar panels under construction at a long-capped landfill in Howard County will soon be used to offset energy costs at a nearby elementary school. The county began installation of the solar arrays this week at the former New Cut Landfill, an 83-acre tract in Ellicott City that shut down operations more than 30 years ago. Officials expect the $462,000 project will be completed in about eight weeks and the panels will begin drawing energy from the...

From Washington to Annapolis, governments are cutting back on services. The economy is down, unemployment remains high and the message of the day is to get by with less. So why is Howard County in the midst of an ambitious expansion of its recycling program to include curbside pickup of food scraps? The environmentally sensitive among us are no doubt delighted with this development. Local officials believe Howard is the first county in the Eastern United States to offer to collect such material from potato peels to coffee grounds and turn them into rich, earthy compost suitable for the garden or the farm field.

Kevin Smith, 15, excitedly began snapping pictures of an old, weathered tombstone he found after wading through tall grass just outside a fenced-in landfill near Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. "What else can I find?" he said to his friends. Takira White,14, stretched her arms high over the same fence, trying to capture the immense height of the piles of concrete and trash. Smith, White and seven Baltimore students plan to display these and other photos at an exhibition on environmental racism — a term used by advocates to describe how impoverished areas become dumping grounds — as part of a summer project for a nonprofit called The Intersection.

Howard County will soon allow residents to add banana peels, egg shells and even old pizza boxes to their recyclables, becoming one of the first East Coast localities to start a large-scale composting program. The county is asking almost 5,000 Elkridge and Ellicott City residents this month to participate in the recycling program, which will begin in September and turn more than 20 percent of landfill waste into compost, reducing disposal costs. "We will make a product versus waste," said Evelyn Tomlin, chief of the county Bureau of Environmental Services.

WESTMINSTER — Carroll County's Department of Public Works, Bureau of Solid Waste, announced this week that Habitat for Humanity will open a ReStore unit at the Northern Landfill Recycling Center in Westminster. ReStore is a nonprofit retail organization that resells new and used building materials, home furnishings and appliances to the public. ReStore sells donated goods to raise funds to build or renovate affordable housing for families in need. Donations gathered at the landfill will be taken to the ReStore Home Improvement Center in Frederick.

As more barrels of toxic substances are unearthed from a Howard County landfill, the legacy of ignorance and shortsightedness swells.The latest nightmare came with the recent discovery of 11 more large drums of toxics at the county's Carrs Mill Landfill. That brings to 161 the number of containers found at the landfill, further compounding the cleanup.Efforts have been launched to determine how the drums were dumped and by whom. But assigning blame will do little to solve the enormous problem that confronts county officials.

The leaking hazardous-waste landfill on Solley Road needs to be resealed promptly, but a proposal to use tire chips instead of sand for drainage warrants more study, an independent consultant said in a report released last night.In the report, the consultant to residents who live near the landfill also seeks more strategically placed wells to monitor the movement of contaminated ground water. Generally, the water is heading west toward Marley Creek.ABB Environmental Services of Arlington, Va., the consultant, which did the report in less than a month, said that because contaminated ground water has reached the outer monitoring wells, new wells should be added to track the movement of the contamination.

The old General Motors Corp. has agreed to pay $2.5 million towards cleanup of a former dump in Rosedale under a nationwide settlement of pollution claims with the federal government. The U.S. attorney's office in Detroit and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $51.4 million deal with the spin-off of the automaker covering cleanup of 34 sites in 11 states. Old General Motors was split in two when it emerged from bankruptcy protection in July 2009. "Old GM," now called Motors Liquidation Co., got much of GM's debt, closed factory sites and liabilities, while General Motors Co. emerged as the new company making cars and trucks.

State environmental officials approved new coal-ash landfill in southeast Baltimore Tuesday, saying "state-of-the-art" pollution controls there should allay nearby residents' fears that the power plant waste will blow into their neighborhoods and leak into the Patapsco River. After more than a year of deliberation, the Maryland Department of the Environment authorized the disposal of up to 650,000 tons of ash in a specially prepared section of a chemical company landfill at Hawkins Point.