Expert sees ‘complicated’ Countywide situation
BOLIVAR - Accompanied to the area by the new director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, a landfill fire expert from California said Friday he’s never seen a situation like that of the Countywide Recycling and Disposal Facility.
“You have a very unique circumstance here,” said Todd Thalhamer, a waste management engineer for the California Environmental Protection Agency. If there is a fire burning inside the Pike Township landfill, “this is about as complicated as a landfill fire gets.”
Thalhamer and new Ohio EPA director Chris Korleski, who was sworn in Thursday, appeared Friday morning at the board meeting of the Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Joint Solid Waste Management District in Bolivar.
Thalhamer told board members he doesn’t know of any other landfill that did what Countywide did from 1993 to 2001: Dump aluminum waste and then allow it to come in contact with recirculated leachate, the liquid that results when rainwater flows through a landfill.
“This is not a typical practice,” he later told reporters, stressing he has not yet decided if Countywide has a fire and what the effects of such a fire would be.
“We have a landfill that appears to be significantly malfunctioning,” said Korleski. “Right now, this is my number one priority at Ohio EPA. ... the odor problem, this heating problem, this is atypical.”
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