Uniontown residents protest state's response to Arrowhead Landfill concerns

Residents in Uniontown, Alabama, think about environmental justice often.

The term refers to the fair treatment of every person’s community — regardless of ZIP code, income level or race —  when it comes to environmental laws, policies and regulations. It is the idea that no community should bear an unequal burden of pollution that results in poor air or water quality.

Really, what concerns Uniontown residents is environmental injustice.

Over the past 15 years since Arrowhead Landfill opened on the outskirts of town, residents say they’ve been subjected to nauseating fumes, waste runoff discharged into their waterways, pests attracted to the area and 24/7 noise from behind the landfill’s fences. They’ve filed hundreds of complaints with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the agency charged with permitting and regulating landfills in the state.

Arrowhead Landfill’s permits are up for renewal, and if ADEM decides to grant the proposed permits, Arrowhead will continue to be allowed to receive up to 15,000 tons of trash daily from any of 33 states.

The public comment period for Arrowhead’s permits ended on July 20 of this year, but a final decision has yet to come down from the agency.

In the meantime, ADEM and Arrowhead have been in communication to handle at least five permit violations that agency representatives discovered during a March inspection. The inspection was initiated after residents submitted complaints.

Those violations included failure to cover the waste at the landfill at the end of each day, failure to confine waste to “as small an area as possible,” failure to recover landfill slopes that eroded to expose waste, and allowance of waste runoff to pool at the bottom of a slope.

On Oct. 28, Arrowhead acknowledged these violations and agreed to pay a total penalty of $30,600, but ADEM has not yet approved the proposed “consent order,” or the penalty agreement.

“It has not been executed at this time,” ADEM spokesperson Jerome Hand said on Wednesday. “Anything is kind of premature now as far as what the timeline looks like. The order has to go through first.”

Residents in Uniontown say this penalty is not enough.

Sisters Ellis Long and Mary Leila Schaeffer have been at the forefront of advocacy for environmental justice in Uniontown since they first heard about the landfill in 2006. They even pursued legal action against ADEM and the Perry County Commission over the then-proposed landfill, challenging its permit on historical and environmental grounds.

Though the judge ruled against them at the time, Long and Schaeffer haven’t stopped fighting for their hometown.

On Thursday morning, they drove to Montgomery from their home in Perry County to protest ADEM’s handling of the landfill, the potential permit renewal and what they consider to be a minuscule monetary penalty for Arrowhead’s violations.

“They can afford to do much better,” Schaeffer said. “We would like ADEM to not put this renewal into effect, but rather to wait and go ahead and put up a moratorium and put out new rules and regulations about the ability of any landfill in Alabama to receive this volume of trash from out of state. We’re just becoming the dumping ground for the whole country.”

Among the waste that Arrowhead has brought in from out of state is 4 million cubic yards of coal ash. It came from a massive coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee, in 2008, and while the coal ash was considered hazardous in Tennessee, it was classified as nonhazardous upon entering Alabama.

Exposure to the substance in the short term can cause irritation and shortness of breath, and in the long term, it can lead to liver damage and a variety of cancers, according to the CDC.

The spill has resulted in years of problems for Tennessee workers, and many Uniontown residents cite the containment of coal ash in the landfill as a factor in their health problems.

In terms of permit renewal and permit violations, though, the coal ash has not been a central factor.

The most recently available proposed penalty agreement — which ADEM has not yet enacted — would allow Arrowhead to utilize a portion of the fine to pave the county road that enters the landfill.

“They need to feel it a lot more,” Long said.

The sisters say the violations cited in the notice seem to purposefully “minimize the adverse effects on the local community and the environmental damage that has resulted from the permit violations that have occurred over the past two years.” They advocate for a maximum penalty, which would be $250,000, according to an Alabama law that took effect in 1982.

During Long and Schaeffer’s demonstration on the front steps of ADEM’s Montgomery office, the agency’s director Lance LeFleur came out to greet them.

He waited beside a huddle of reporters before shaking hands with each sister.

“I just wanted to make sure that you all knew that we welcome you to exercise all of your rights over here,” LeFleur said.

When Schaeffer invited him to respond to their requests and claims of environmental damage happening in Uniontown, LeFleur respectfully declined.

“Remember what you’re dealing with over there are humans, and they are suffering,” Schaeffer said.

“Absolutely,” LeFleur responded. “We want to make sure that we’re attending to all of the concerns that people have.”

In addition to the landfill concerns, Uniontown residents deal with a failing sewer system that’s also polluting their water. The state attorney general and ADEM are handling that matter via a lawsuit filed earlier this year.

But that’s another story.

Hadley Hitson covers the rural South for the Montgomery Advertiser and Report for America. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser or donate to Report for America. 

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Uniontown residents protest ADEM over Arrowhead Landfill complaints