An aerial view of the McPherson
landfill. Photo by Christy Potter
One of the
biggest political bombs to go off in McPherson in recent history
is the revelation that the Equus Beds aquifer beneath the city
landfill is contaminated.
The issue has sparked a controversy
between Gov. Joan Finney, who has ordered the landfill closed
until the contamination is remediated, and the owners of the
landfill, who say the closure is unnecessary and may end up in a
legal battle.
An official with the Kansas Department of
Health and Environment said the state has been aware of the
contamination several years prior to the purchase of the facility
by the New Jersey trash hauling company that now operates it.
Greg Crawford of the KDHE said there were
tests done on the monitoring wells at the site in 1986 and again
in 1990 - before the transfer of ownership was complete.
"So clearly, this contamination was
in existence prior to the purchase," Crawford said.
So the question that now plagues the
residents of McPherson is how the groundwater became contaminated
in the first place.
Local industrialists speak
out
The managers of various industries in
McPherson say their companies are highly regulated by
environmental laws and recycle much of the waste they produce.
Randy Burnison, plan manager of Manville
Corporation, Kevin Kaberline, industrial engineering supervisor,
and Larry Satzler, industrial engineer, said their company
recycles everything it can economically recycle.
Kaberline said Manville keeps expanding
its recycling practices.
He said that industries, because of the
volume of waste they produce, are much more regulated on disposal
than households.
Tom Berry, plant manager of Sterling
Drug, Larry Smith, health and safety supervisor, and Hank Osinga,
engineering manager, said everything made at Sterling Drug is
injectible into the human body, so nothing they could have put at
the landfill would have contributed to the groundwater
contamination.
Because of the already strict regulations
Sterling Drug was functioning under, Berry said the change in
environmental laws didn't effect the plant much.
For example, Smith said, if the company
has a bad or impure chemical, it isn't just poured down the drain
but instead is collected and hauled away to be disposed of
properly.
Things like corrugated paper and aluminum
are recycled now, but at one time were hauled to the landfill.
Needles are ground up and incinerated.
Fred Pierce, vice-president of refining
at NCRA, and Ron Schaumburg, vice-president of human resources,
said NCRA's regular refuse has been picked up for years by the
operating company of the city landfill. But other than that,
Schaumburg said, NCRA really doesn't dispose of much waste in the
landfill.
Pierce said NCRA has a collection system
for water and oil runoff. The water is treated and discharged
under the supervision of the KDHE and the oil is recycled.
Transformer oil containing PCBs (poly chlorinated biphenyls) is
categorized as hazardous waste and taken away by specialists.
Contamination levels low
Rick Anderson, general manager of
McPherson's Board of Public Utilities, said the contamination
probably comes from normal household waste - things like oven
cleaners, paint containers, bug sprays, degreasing agents and shoe
polish.
Anderson said these things do not present
problems as contaminates until they get into the water supply.
Although the groundwater is contaminated
and has reportedly been so since 1986, Anderson said the important
thing for McPherson residents to realize is that the level of
contamination is low and does not pose an imminent threat to
McPherson's municipal water supply.
To give a perspective on the amount of
contamination, Lisa Larson of the KDHE likened it to one
eyedropper of contamination being released in a full-sized
swimming pool.
Ms. Larson said if one out of 100,000
people drinks one liter of contaminated water every day for 70
years, that person would be at risk for developing cancer.
"Our concern is if anything should
happen and the contamination would move offsite," Anderson
said. "It if does, then it could threaten our well
field"
He also said if the contamination
migrates, the indications are that it would go in a southwestern
direction, and McPherson's well field is northwest of the
landfill.
In that case, Anderson said, the threat
would be to those private wells southwest of the site.
Officials say the contamination problems
at the landfill have been developing over a period of several
years - not because of willful negligence on anyone's part, but
because environmental laws and the way landfills are run have
changed over the years.
A history of federal
mandates
McPherson County Solid Waste Director
Gary McDonald, who has a degree in environmental science and
engineering, said the Federal Solid Waste Disposal Act started in
1966 and dealt with solid waste, waste water, clean water,
regulations on waste disposal and waste management.
From the Federal Solid Waste Disposal Act
stemmed the primitive laws dealing with hazardous waste disposal.
Kansas started dealing with hazardous waste in the early 1970s,
McDonald said.
He said in 1976, the EPA passed the
Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) and the federal
government started dealing separately with hazardous and solid
waste, waste management and disposal issues.
"The law started identifying two
separate waste streams - hazardous and non-hazardous,"
McDonald explained. "They wanted to try and separate them.
They mandated that states develop with the EPA programs to
regulate and deal with hazardous waste and generators as a
separate issue from the old solid waste management system."
McDonald said the RCRA mandated the
states re-do their solid waste management plan.
"The RCRA mandates the states revamp
the solid waste management plan done for the federal solid waste
management act in 1966 to comply with new requirements,"
McDonald said.
He said the RCRA replaced the Federal
Solid Waste Management Act. In 1976, the RCRA required states to
classify and develop a plan to close all open dumps or convert
them to sanitary landfills by 1980.
"There have been some amendments to
the RCRA since then. Most of them are directed to hazardous
waste," McDonald said.
He said by the early to mid 1980s, all
the dumps were closed or converted to landfills and the new
regulations were in place to implement and promote sanitary
landfill disposal.
"And new landfills are permitted as
such," he said.
McDonald said the state is now waiting
for new regulations from RCRA on subtitle D which deals with solid
waste.
