How Lexington’s trash is causing a major stink in Scott County
An administrative law judge has ruled Waste Services of the Bluegrass can not expand the Scott County landfill where Fayette County’s trash has been sent since 2015, handing a tentative victory to neighbors who have complained of sour odors and dangerous truck traffic.
The Dec. 30 decision by administrative law judge Virginia Gorley said the Energy and Environment Cabinet’s Division of Waste Management should deny an application by Waste Services of the Bluegrass for an expansion of its Central Kentucky Landfill in northern Scott County. The order also says the cabinet can not approve or finalize a draft permit for expansion.
The decision is not yet final. The order still must be signed by Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Rebecca W. Goodman, who could reverse or agree with Gorley’s recommendation. If Goodman signs off on the decision, Waste Services of the Bluegrass could still apply for a new permit to expand its landfill.
A lawyer who represents residents of Scott County who filed the administrative action over the proposed permit said Gorley’s decision was just the latest win in a long-running battle between neighbors of the landfill and Waste Services of the Bluegrass.
“They are very happy with the judge’s recommendation and feel vindicated,” said Stephen Porter, a Louisville lawyer who represents residents there. “We won at the planning commission and at the board of adjustment. We have won at the circuit court level and now we have won with the administrative law judge.”
David Royse, a lawyer for Waste Services of the Bluegrass, said it’s too early to say what the company will do.
“We are still evaluating the hearing officer’s recommendation and what, if any, impact it will have,” Royse said. “We are not going to speculate on any actions the secretary may ultimately take.”
The future of Fayette County’s trash
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government will continue to use Waste Services for its trash even if the current landfill at 493 Double Culvert Road runs out of space. Fayette County awarded Waste Services its solid waste contract in 2015 and renewed it for an additional five years in June.
Lexington’s contract with Waste Services says the company must find another landfill to put Lexington’s trash if the landfill reaches capacity, said Todd Slatin, the director of purchasing for Lexington.
“And they have to do it at the same price,” Slatin said.
Royse said Waste Services will honor its contract with Lexington regardless of whether the landfill is allowed to expand.
“Waste Services of the Bluegrass does not own other landfills but we do have the ability to utilize other landfills and implement other business measures to ensure we fulfill our contractual obligations,” Royse said.
In various state and court documents, the company has said the expansion is needed. Waste Services has also long argued the county knew it would expand when it purchased the landfill from the county in 1999.
Some have said the landfill could run out of space in the next two years, depending on the rate of trash going into the landfill and its compaction rate.
Most of the trash is from Fayette County.
Scott County Fiscal Court Judge Executive Joe Pat Covington said some estimates say 86 percent of trash taken to the landfill is from Lexington.
Covington, who was elected in November 2018, said he has spoken with Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton about Scott County’s issues with the landfill.
“We’ve talked about concerns Scott County has related to compliance issues with Waste Services of the Bluegrass,” Covington said in an interview last fall.
Environmental concerns
Lexington’s contract also says Waste Services and Central Kentucky Landfill must stay in compliance with all state and federal regulations. From April 2015 to April 2019, the landfill racked up 48 notices of violations from state environmental regulators, according to court and state environmental records.
In March, Waste Services and state regulators entered into an agreed order over repeated odor violations, according to documents. Waste Services agreed to put additional methane extraction wells on its property as part of that agreement. In various court documents, Waste Services said the stalled expansion has contributed to the odor problems because it could not install the methane extraction wells at the same time it was using the landfill.
According to an Aug. 22 letter to Covington from the Department of Environmental Protection, state air quality inspectors said they had received 796 odor complaints since Jan. 1, 2019. The letter said state environmental officials had conducted 53 odor tests and issued 20 violations during that time period. The Herald-Leader received the letter and Central Kentucky Landfill’s notices of violations through an Open Records Act request.
It’s not just odor that has drawn the ire of environmental regulators, according to documents.
In April, pollutants were discharged into a nearby creek and the landfill was not being properly covered by dirt, according to a list of violations included in court documents. In September 2018, contaminated water known as leachate was running off the liner footprint into a drainage ditch. Also in September, regulators found that a new section of the landfill was opened without a liner.
Slatin said despite the long list of violations, the landfill was not deemed to be out of compliance. If it was, it would have been shut down.
“Nearly every landfill has notices of violations,” Slatin said.
Officials with Waste Services of the Bluegrass said they have addressed all serious regulatory concerns and have invested more than $700,000 in a methane collection system to stop odors.
Waste Services said the spike in complaints was due to an organized effort by neighbors to stop the landfill from operating, even though it had not been controversial in the previous 15 years of its operation. The effort to stop the expansion also ratcheted up after Waste Services won the Fayette County contract from a competitor, Republic.
“Suddenly, opponents of the landfill undertook an organized effort to utilize the delay in expansion to try to do away with the landfill in Scott County altogether — without regard to any prior planning, commitments or investments,” Royse said. “State and local agencies were bombarded with thousands of phone calls and emails registering complaints, the vast majority of which were not substantiated by inspectors. As a result, the Kentucky Environmental Cabinet and its inspectors have been present on a near constant basis at the landfill. Kentucky has a rigorous regulatory framework in place for landfills, and NOV’s are issued to address a host of different regulatory issues ranging from very minor technical issues to serious, ongoing problems.”
In 2014, as Waste Services was bidding on the Lexington contract, then-Scott County Judge-Executive George Lusby sent LFUCG a letter that said the county had authorized out-of-county waste.
Waste Services has long argued that when it purchased the landfill from the county in 1999, the county knew it was going to expand beyond the 100 acres it purchased from the county and had agreed that the landfill would become a regional landfill.
Porter, though, said issues with the landfill came to a head after Fayette County awarded its contract to Waste Services in 2015 because of the rapid increase in trash and trucks. Royse said other counties also send waste to the Central Kentucky landfill, including Jessamine County.
“The problem is not just the odor but the amount of truck traffic,” Porter said.
There have been multiple accidents involving dump trucks and garbage trucks in the area near the landfill since 2015. In 2016, a Georgetown woman was killed when two dump trucks got into an accident near the landfill. In 2017, a school bus was side-swiped by a dump truck near the landfill. No one was hurt in that accident.
The company’s request for an expansion was denied twice — once by the planning commission and again by the board of adjustment, because it does not have the right zoning to expand its operations past the 100 acres it purchased from the county, Porter said.
Other lawsuits, challenges to landfill
Gorley’s Dec. 30 ruling is one of a half dozen lawsuits and administrative actions involving Waste Services of the Bluegrass over its operation and application to expand the Central Kentucky Landfill. In May, a class action lawsuit was filed by landowners near the Double Culvert Road dump, alleging Waste Services of the Bluegrass was negligent in addressing “noxious odors” and has caused damage to surrounding homeowners.
Waste Services has denied the allegations and has asked to transfer the lawsuit to a different county, arguing it could not get a fair trial in Scott County, according to court documents.
The attempted expansion of the landfill also prompted several pending lawsuits in Scott Circuit Court that challenge previous decisions to deny the expansion by the board of adjustment and the Scott County Planning Commission. Those lawsuits — filed by residents and Waste Services of the Bluegrass — are still pending.
In addition, the Scott County Fiscal Court has considered amending its current waste management plan, which outlines what types of trash can and can not be allowed in the county. The fiscal court could reduce the amount of out-of-area trash allowed, eliminate out-of-area waste or keep the current waste management plan.
More than 200 hundred people attended a May public meeting to complain about the odors, truck traffic and other environmental concerns about the Central Kentucky Landfill.
Plans to amend the waste management plan were put on hold late last year to give time for the various lawsuits and administrative challenges over the expansion to be adjudicated, said Covington. The Scott County Fiscal Court has hired Tom FitzGerald, a lawyer with the Kentucky Resources Council, to advise the county on next steps.