Expert to decide if landfill on fire
The Akron Beacon Journal
EAST SPARTA - A California expert on landfill fires, who in June alerted the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to problems at Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility in southern Stark County, is to begin meeting in Columbus today with EPA personnel.
Todd Thalhamer has been hired by the agency to determine whether the landfill is on fire and, if so, how large the fire might be and what can be done about it.
"I'm not riding in on a white horse,'' he said Tuesday. "I'm just trying to help.... The goal is simple: To determine where we are and what we need to do.''
Tim Vandersall, general manager of the 258-acre landfill, which is owned by Republic Waste Services of Ohio, pledged to work with Thalhamer and the EPA in the investigation.
"We will totally cooperate... and we'll be available,'' he said.
The company has said repeatedly that odor and heat problems at the landfill are not being caused by a fire, but by an intense chemical reaction caused by water mixing with aluminum wastes.
The problems at the landfill, Vandersall said, have been blown out of proportion and have been unfairly portrayed.
On June 10, Thalhamer was a key speaker at a Stark County conference on landfill fires.
According to EPA records reviewed by the Beacon Journal, at that conference, he was approached by a consultant who said he worked for Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility.
The consultant -- not identified in EPA documents -- informed Thalhamer that the landfill was generating large volumes of highly flammable hydrogen gas, perhaps from large volumes of reactive aluminum waste. He and Thalhamer agreed that the hydrogen gas could cause a major fire at the landfill, the EPA records say.
Thalhamer on Tuesday confirmed the details contained in the Ohio EPA records from the agency's Columbus and Twinsburg offices.
According to those records, the consultant told Thalhamer he had recommended that Countywide take three steps:
• Stop accepting aluminum waste at the landfill, a step that had been implemented a few months earlier by the company.
• Test the aluminum wastes, though the generator of the wastes had refused to provide Countywide with samples.
• Tell the Ohio EPA about the problem.
The consultant asked Thalhamer not to reveal their conversation to the Ohio EPA, the records say.
But citing a threat to human health and the environment, Thalhamer relayed the conversation to the Ohio EPA. He suggested that the agency send an inspector to Countywide.
EPA staff already knew
Roughly two weeks after the conference ended, the records show, that suggestion reached Scott Winkler, an EPA staff member in the Twinsburg office. Winkler told agency officials that he was already aware of the situation and that Countywide was "handling the issue.''
Vandersall, Countywide's general manager, said Tuesday that Republic Waste Services made initial contact with the Ohio EPA about heat issues from the landfill last spring, prior to the conference.
Since the Ohio EPA announced last week that it was hiring Thalhamer to determine if there is a fire at the landfill in Pike Township, he has been reviewing 150 pages of available data on the site, and he will put together a corrective-action plan this week. The plan will likely include a specific timetable for needed actions by the EPA and the company.
It is possible that additional and more-timely data might be needed, said Thalhamer, who's a firefighter and staff member at the California EPA.
He said he intends to review infrared recordings of the landfill taken in August and again in December by Larry Davis, a Kent pilot.
In a Beacon Journal story published Jan. 24, both Davis and Thalhamer said they believe a large underground fire is smouldering at Countywide.
Thalhamer said Tuesday that he remains convinced that an underground fire is burning at the landfill, perhaps sparked by a chemical reaction from the aluminum wastes. There is a chance that there is no fire, just a chemical reaction, he said, although he does not feel that is the case.
No new trash in area
The area of the landfill where the heat is located covers 88 acres and no longer accepts trash. The trash now coming to the dump -- about 6,000 tons or 300 truckloads a day -- goes into a new landfill cell.
In September, the Ohio EPA declared Countywide a public nuisance because of odors from the site that plagued residents of southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas counties.
Thalhamer first became officially involved in the Countywide situation in September. At that time, he was asked to consult on the odor problem by the U.S. EPA. He was involved in numerous telephone conferences with federal and state agencies about the odor problem and reviewed what little data was available on the site.
It appeared that the installation of a tarp across 30 acres of the landfill was helping to reduce odors, and it looked like the problem was abating last fall, Thalhamer said Tuesday.
But the infrared photographs taken by Davis showed the area of underground heat at Countywide has grown perhaps 12-fold, he said, and that raised new concerns.
Major worries
Ohio EPA records in Columbus and Twinsburg indicate that in his September consulting work, Thalhamer had big concerns about the Countywide situation. These included:
• High levels of hydrogen gas and acetylene.
Those gases are evidence of a spontaneous chemical reaction that should not be occurring in a solid-waste landfill. The gases are flammable and pose a significant fire threat.
And the hydrogen gas -- 50 percent of the gas in the landfill's monitoring wells by volume was hydrogen -- could also signal a more dangerous problem: the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas, which can kill at concentrations as low as 10 parts per million.
• High benzene levels.
The Canton Health Department, which handles air pollution in Stark County for the Ohio EPA, found benzene levels of 14,000 parts per billion below a tarp on the landfill. The eight-hour average for industrial exposure is 1,000 parts per billion.
Such levels could require protective equipment for workers and first-responders.
Benzene, Thalhamer told the EPA, is evidence of a hazardous-waste fire, not a solid-waste fire, and a lot more dangerous.
• High carbon-monoxide levels, likely due to rapid oxidation or incomplete combustion.
Levels of 5,000 to 8,000 parts per million indicate that one of the two processes was taking place in Countywide.
Carbon monoxide levels of 25 to 100 parts per million indicate a possible fire; 100 to 500, a smouldering fire; 500 to 1,000, a likely fire or chemical reaction; above 1,000, a definite fire.
Causes uncertain
Countywide officials were unable to offer an initial explanation to the EPA for the high levels, the EPA records say.
Thalhamer also recommended that more research be done into what waste went into Countywide to consider whether materials other than aluminium waste were causing the chemical reaction/fire.
And he said it could be dangerous to take corrective action at Countywide before it was determined what was happening underground.
"You're asking for something to explode,'' Thalhamer told the Ohio EPA in reference to actions already taken by the company to curtail odors.
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