Ohio EPA approves permit for American Landfill to build wastewater injection well
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has approved a final permit for American Landfill to drill an 8,000-foot-deep Class I non-hazardous waste injection well on its property in northern Sandy Township for the disposal of wastewater.
The agency issued the final permit on March 30. Ohio EPA Director Ann Vogel, who was appointed to the position in January by Gov. Mike DeWine, approved and signed the permit. Her predecessor, Laurie Stevenson, stepped down at the end of December. The permit, which was announced publicly on Thursday, is set to expire four years from that date.
The construction timeline for the injection well is not clear. Landfill officials had indicated in November they hoped to start construction of the injection well in 2024. They submitted the permit application in January 2022. The Ohio EPA issued a draft permit in October.
The permit expires within 18 months of the effective date, or by the end of September 2024, if the landfill has not "undertaken a continuing program of construction" or has not entered into a binding contract to complete construction within a reasonable time.
A spokeswoman for Waste Management, which operates the landfill, wrote in an email that the company intends to adhere to that timeline. She wrote that the company acknowledges receipt of the permit and "the facility continues to operate under the highest standards, with strict oversight and permitting of the Ohio EPA."
The state agency stressed that American Landfill, which has operated in Sandy Township since 1976, will need to get another permit from the Ohio EPA before it could dispose of wastewater known as leachate in the injection well. That would require another public meeting, public hearing and period for the public to submit comments.
An Ohio EPA statement said to avoid contamination of local water sources, the injection well must be able to send the wastewater to depths far lower than the lowermost water sources, which are generally up to 500 feet below the surface.
Related: Residents raise questions about well permit for Sandy Township landfill
Related: American Landfill seeks to construct injection well
Landfill officials said they want to build the injection well so the company no longer has to transport by truck 160,000 gallons a day of leachate to area sewage plants in Akron, Canton and Alliance to be processed. It adds up to about 5,000 truck trips per year.
The leachate is a result of rainwater flowing through the waste disposed of in the landfill. The sewage plants treat the leachate before releasing it as water into rivers and streams. American Landfill said in November it accepted about 3,000 tons of waste a day. The landfill itself is 380 acres on 1,200 acres owned by Waste Management.
Jill VanVoorhis of Sandy Township, who was an activist for the now-defunct group Citizens Against American Landfill Expansion, said she's not aware of anyone having the appetite to file an appeal of the permit approval with the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission. Her group's appeals to the commission in the 2000s against the landfill's expansion ultimately failed.
The deadline to file an appeal is 30 days after the March 30 approval.
"It's not surprising that (Ohio EPA officials) always seem to go with the waste industry on anything," said VanVoorhis, who was one of more than 40 residents who attended Ohio EPA's public hearing on the permit in November at Indian Run Christian Church in Osnaburg Township. "It's the same thing over and over. Whatever the waste industry wants is what the waste industry gets, whatever the impact on the community or the lack of study on what it could do to the environment. ... It's just what we have learned to live with."
In November, Ohio EPA staff at the public meeting said American Landfill's injection well was set to be the 11th Class I, non-hazardous injection well in Ohio but the first at a landfill site and the first in Stark County. The well would have multiple layers of cement casing. And American Landfill said it would build a monitoring well to seek to detect any signs of leachate contamination of water sources from the injection well.
Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ohio EPA clears American Landfill to build wastewater injection well
