Dear Friends, It is a new year, but the Riverbend Landfill saga continues. Wednesday, I was interviewed by the McMinnville News Register regarding the e-mail received from the Oregon Department of Minerals and Industries (DOGAMI). DOGAMI said that they will issue Riverbend landfill a Notice of Violation for mining dirt without a Cut and Fill Removal Permit. These permits are generally required anytime anyone wants to move more than 5,000 cubic yards of dirt in a calendar year unless it is for highway construction. I do not subscribe to the News Register, but the mining without a permit story did not make it into the paper. Perhaps, the News Register, like Yamhill County, is reluctant to address the problems at Riverbend. For the record: 1. I filed two complaints to DOGAMI, one for this year’s mining and one for previous mining in the floodway of the South Yamhill River. 2. It took DOGAMI one day to respond to this year’s mining. I am not sure whether it will include previous mining in the flood way of the South Yamhill River a few years ago. The previous mining was stopped by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community over cultural resources concerns. 3. I filed a complaint with the Yamhill County Department of Community Development for allowing Riverbend Landfill to “jump the gun” by mining on the tax lot next to the landfill without Site Design or land use approval. I have received no response. 4. A DEQ 1200-C Sediment and Erosion Control Permit for this year’s mining on the Exclusive Farm Use property next to the landfill was not probably not obtained as it would require a Land Use Compatibility Statement from Yamhill County, and the County e-mailed that they could not find one in the file. These permits are required whenever one acre or more land is disturbed by a development action. 5. The eight acres or so of land mined is probably destroyed for farm use from now on, but the soil on it, and probably the poplar plantation next to it, was previously contaminated by irrigating leachate on it. 6. Mining of the land by Waste Management “jumping the gun” on excavation prior to any land use approval probably saved them a couple hundred thousand dollars by not having to import dirt for construction of the Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) wall. A “do it, then ask forgiveness” policy can be quite profitable when you get away with it. 7. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, who conducts monthly inspections of the operation of the landfill and inspection of the MSE Wall, apparently did not see any problems with the mining activities. Since the DOGAMI e-mail came Tuesday and my posting on Facebook and my notification to Yamhill County, Riverbend Landfill has had two working days to do damage control. I would not underestimate Waste Management’s political pull. Will Yamhill County determine that it is an illegal land use activity? I don’t expect a response. Once the county starts down the road on finding fault with operations at Riverbend, they will have to start answering the questions, “Why did you let it happen?” They have avoided having to do that for 30 years. Will DOGAMI follow through on the Notice of Violation? This is a hard one for me to predict. Previously, DOGAMI buckled under pressure from the DEQ when the DEQ lobbied DOGAMI to get DOGAMI’S 9.0 earthquake design standard reduced to 8.5. A 9.0 earhquake is 3.162 times bigger than an 8.5 quake, but releases 5.623 times the energy. DOGAMI consented to the DEQ writing the summary of the two meetings with only one edit stating that DOGAMI felt that the design assumptions “tend to reduce the risk”. This qualification proved true as Kleinfelder, a national geotechnical firm retained by Waste Not, studied the design calculations and concluded that the calculated failure amount of 10 (6 to 12 the allowable design standard) will actually be two to five times greater. By the way, the California of practice is now 6, but the DEQ’s attitude is, “ What’s approved is approved”. Apparently, from what I have been told, Waste Management put pressure on Kleinfelder to stop doing work documenting engineering design problems at Waste Management’s facilities, so Kleinfelder fired Waste-Not as a client. I plan on filing a complaint with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for not requiring a 1200-C permit for the mining, but since they have already ignored EPA and their own standards by waving the 1200-C permit for the rest of the landfill, I do not recommend you holding your breath on that one either. Unlike DOGAMI, the DEQ with their monthly inspections should have been aware of what is going on, particularly since they have already responded to a letter from me on previous work across the property line. Waste Management has until 8 January to answer comments on its Site Design Review application for expansion.. So far, no design calculations on the existing, proposed and expanded berms have been submitted, and I have no evidence that Yamhill County even considers that a problem much less even asked for them. I also wrote a 25 page letter with exhibits documenting failures and oversights at the landfill. I don’t expect Waste Management to address them, but Yamhill County should require not only answers to them, but for the problems to be studied, corrected when possible and funded prior to any expansion or approvals. In conclusion, I will let you know what happens. Thanks, Leonard Rydell
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 01:34:38 +0000
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