After the conference call with Representative Michael Houser, Senator Jacob LaTurner, KDHE Director of waste management Bill Bider and myself was made public, I have been getting a lot of questions on what this all means. I will try to explain how this impacts the current landfill situation.. When the landfill situation first came out. There were two different subjects that had to be addressed. The first was island annexation. There was a lot of misunderstandings on how a city could bypass the county and annex land that was non contiguous. This was and continues to be a problem with the existing State statutes. The commissioners did not and still do not have a say in this type of island annexation(city owned land). The county found itself helpless in this area. Representative Houser introduced a bill to correct this. Senator Laturner is supporting it in the Senate and with all of the hard work that these two gentleman have put into it. It looks like it has a very good chance of being corrected. The second subject that we had to address is can a city bypass the county and obtain a permit from KDHE to operate a subtitle D landfill. The thought from the side that was trying to annex land and get the permit was yes. The position the county has always held is no! From the very beginning of this we made a unanimous decision to fight this and to hire legal council to represent us in this matter. With what we already knew and the advise of our council we were confident we were right and would win the fight at the permitting stage. The only question was would KDHE agree with our interpretation that the counties solid waste management program and commissioners had to sign off on a landfill in Cherokee County, or would it agree with the city that they could adopt their own plan and bypass the commissioners. during the conference call this question was answered in favor of the counties interpretation. So what does this all mean? We still have a lot of work to do on getting the current annexation laws changed. Representative Houser, and Senator LaTurner still needs our support in seeing that this get finalized. Most importantly at this current time, it means if anyone wants to open up a landfill in Cherokee County the commissioners have to sign off on it. I know that a lot of tears have been shed, tempers have flared, and emotional stress has taken its toll. But we all have to drop our pride and arrogance, humble ourselves and all work together for the betterment of our county. A very special thank you, to all of the citizens of Cherokee County!
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 05:10:55 +0000