Pittsylvania County landfill fined for waste leak

Comment: Sleeper said the small size of the leak is the reason why the county didn’t notify the public of the leak last spring. (Secret leaks, is this the future, is it legal?)

By John CranePublished: January 27, 2009

Pittsylvania County must pay a $1,300 penalty to the state for a leachate leak discovered last spring at its landfill in Dry Fork.

The leak, a violation of the Virginia Waste Management Act and Virginia Solid Waste Management regulations, involved a “very minimal release of leachate,” Marvin Booth III, enforcement representative with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s Lynchburg office, said Tuesday. “Leachate” is liquid that has passed through solid waste and contains waste material, according to the DEQ.

“No matter how small it is, we have to address it,” Booth said.

Booth said there was little chance that leachate reached the Banister River watershed. (was the leake check?)

During an unannounced, routine quarterly inspection on March 21, DEQ staff discovered a seep in a waste cell entering the landfill’s storm water conveyance system that drains into a sedimentation pond before potentially discharging into a wetlands area next to the Banister River, according to the order from the Virginia Waste Management Board.

Chemical analysis of seep samples by a county environmental consultant found contamination by “metals and organic constituents,” the state board said.

County investigation revealed that a leachate pump impeller had corroded and it no longer pumped leachate from a waste cell at the landfill. The landfill had no flow meters or hour meters, but the county has since installed them and replaced the leachate pump impeller, Booth said.

County Administrator Dan Sleeper said the amount of water involved in the leak was only enough to fill a coffee cup and that the $1,300 civil charge is the department’s minimum fine. Leachate is pumped to a holding pond and is sent to a treatment plant in Chatham, Sleeper said, adding the leak occurred at a closed facility.

The order from the Virginia Solid Waste Management Board states that procedures during periodic inspections of the pump “were not sufficient to detect failures of this nature.”

The county has since instituted procedures for weekly checks of the leachate flow meters, the board said.

Sleeper said the small size of the leak is the reason why the county didn’t notify the public of the leak last spring.

Citizens Need to Wake Up to Dangers of Uranium Mining

Wednesday, November 12, 2008 9:26 AM EST
Chatham Star-Tribune


To the editor:

I have attended uranium education meetings and found disturbing circumstances.

People are not attending the meetings or taking an interest and I wonder why? Do they think if you do not live near the mines that they will be safe? The answer is no.

Winds from open-pit uranium can blow uranium-laced dust up to 50 or more miles away.

Floods can wash uranium tailings into our rivers, and radon gas can be carried by the winds.

Remember the fires in North Carolina; the smoke made it as far as Roanoke.

The winds will carry the uranium particles to all parts of the county and the City of Danville, plus Halifax County, North Carolina, etc.

Water contamination, heavy rains will flood the uranium tailings ponds, which means overflow will happen.

This means the Banister River will be polluted. The river flows toward the drinking water for Halifax and Bugs Island, which goes to Virginia Beach and Kerr Lake for the Raleigh- Durham area. Eventually it makes its way to the sounds of North Carolina and the Atlantic.

The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is doing a study about mining uranium to do away with a moratorium on this type of mining.

It will be mined unless the local people stand up and say no, it can be done.

Once it is mined on Coles Hill, Callands could be next. There are huge deposits of uranium located in this area.

In addition, the Sandy and Banister river headwaters start in Callands. Open-pit uranium mining in the area will destroy the rivers.

The destroyed rivers provide water for cows and the Town of Halifax, plus potential for contaminated water making its way to the Dan River and Buggs Island.

This type of radical mining will lower property values and discourage future business development in the Pittsylvania County and Danville.

Uranium is located along Route 29 highway, points west, east and deposits continue to Maine and Georgia.

Once open-pit uranium is allowed to start in Virginia, the whole East Coast could be mined if localities and states do not hear the call to action.

Therefore, people of Southside Virginia please get involved and stand up for our right to protect ourselves against this very destructive assault on the lands that must sustain us all.

Please write all your government representatives and everyone you know and tell them to ban uranium mining in Virginia.

The great and innovative people of our country can rise to our energy problems without decimating our environment, communities and future generations.

Sue Pruitt
Chatham

http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2008/11/13/chatham/opinion/opinion11.txt

Halifax Hosts Three Public Hearings Tuesday, October 14

Halifax Town Council will conduct three public hearings during their Tuesday night regular monthly meeting. The first of those focuses on a request for a special use permit for Dana Jones which will allow her to have a home occupation business in a residential district. Jones will be working from her home with several local tax and bookkeeping services.

The second hearing is advertised to solicit public input on an application to the Virginia Department of Transportation for funding through its Enhancement Program for the Banister Bridge Project.

Lastly Council will hold its second required public hearing on the centralization of the Town's municipal election polling place to be located in the gymnasium of the Mary Bethune Complex for the 2010 municipal election.

Following a recommendation from its Current Affairs Committee on Thursday afternoon, Council is expected to approve the Banister River Monitoring Project to be carried out by B&B Consultants, Inc. The project will entail having water samples taken from the Banister River near the Coles uranium site in Pittsylvania County to establish the baseline quantity of uranium found in the water of the river.

Members are also expected to approve the Town's participation in a regional water supply project which will also include Halifax County and the three other towns in the county - South Boston, Scottsburg and Virgilina. The cost of the study is expected to run somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 with the cost being divided among the participating jurisdictions on a per person basis. The project must be approved no later than November 2, but will not have to be carried out until 2011.

Council is also expected to approve the move to Benchmark Bank for the Town's financial operations while maintaining some of the services of Sun Trust bank.

A report on the plans of the Halifax Village Business Association shows that a Halloween event is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 31 from 5:30-8 p.m. which will include a costume contest and pumpkin carving. An Open House is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 20 from 5:30-8 p.m. and the annual Christmas parade has been set for Friday, Dec. 5 from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

http://www.thenewsrecord.com/2008webfiles/20081013halifax.htm