EPA chief will tour landfill
The Canton Repository
BOLIVAR - A day after being sworn in, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Chris Korleski will tour the Countywide Recycling and Disposal Facility today, the agency said.
"The site is a top priority for him. He recognizes what this community has gone through ... and he wants to work aggressively to see this situation resolved," said EPA spokesman Mike Settles. "That's important for him - to see what's going on, to have a visual image of what's taking place."
He added that Korleski, who was appointed last month to be EPA director by Gov. Ted Strickland, attended a meeting where Countywide was discussed, shortly before his swearing-in ceremony Thursday.
In September, Joe Koncelik, the agency's director under then-governor Bob Taft, ordered Countywide to fix its odor problem by Dec. 15, after nearly a year of complaints. After the deadline passed, some residents said the odors, though less intense, had not gone away. The agency has said that Korleski will decide by around Feb. 21 whether to recommend that the Stark County Board of Health suspend Countywide's operating license.
Korleski will be accompanied at the Pike Township landfill by Todd Thalhamer, a landfill fire expert for the California Environmental Protection Agency, Settles said.
Last month, a Kent pilot who had taken aerial infrared images of Countywide said the images indicate that an underground fire is burning in the landfill and that it's grown 12 times in size since August. Local officials have expressed concern that any fire might damage the plastic liner that helps keep waste from escaping the landfill.
EPA officials believe aluminum waste from a Uhrichsville foundry that was dumped at Countywide years ago is reacting with water and creating the odors and heat in the landfill.
Countywide says temperature readings, tests of gases released and inspections show there is no fire and that no soot, smoke, ash or flames have been seen.
On Wednesday, Thalhamer flew over Countywide in a Ohio Highway Patrol helicopter with an infrared imaging video camera, said Settles, who declined to discuss what Thalhamer found.
Korleski, a former environmental lawyer for Honda, the Ohio attorney general's office and the Ohio EPA, is expected to attend the board meeting of the Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Joint Solid Waste Management District at 9:30 a.m. today in Bolivar before he goes to Countywide.
View related articles:
