City will pay millions for landfill cap

By Charles Sowell  

AUGUST 17, 2010 6:37 a.m. (0)

The city of Spartanburg is on the hook to pay all of the estimated $5.5 million to $6 million that it will cost to put an earthen cap on the old Arkwright landfill, city officials have confirmed.

Costs could be higher, said City Manager Ed Memmott, but are not expected to exceed the high end of estimates.

City council went into executive session last week to discuss legal issues relating to Arkwright and a Journal investigation of the landfill situation uncovered the pending bill for capping the facility.

Harold Mitchell, a state representative who also is owner of H. Mitchell, LLC, an environmental mitigation management company, has been intimately involved in the Arkwright landfill for years now.

He was raised in the Arkwright community and has seen first hand the problems there.

“We had a meeting recently between city officials and officials with the EPA and DHEC and it was decided to go ahead with capping the landfill,” Mitchell said.

“None of this was done in secret,” said Memmott. “We’ve had the 2-mil tax on the books for years now to deal with costs associated with Arkwright.”

Right now the city has about $1.5 million in hand out of the 2-mil tax to pay for the cap.

City officials hope the costs for capping Arkwright will be lower than the estimates, Memmott said. “With the economy as it is, we feel like there could be a significant savings by doing the work now.”

Mayor Junie White said, “The city decided to go ahead and bite the bullet on capping Arkwright.”

“There’s no federal money available for this project, none at all,” White said in a telephone interview. “We will probably pay for it with a bond issue and repay the bond through the 2-mil tax.”

Arkwright is an old city landfill that operated in the 1950s and 1960s, White said. It has been closed since 1972 when a thin soil cover was placed over the buried wastes.

It was sold to a private party in 1978, EPA records show and is now part of a redevelopment project known as ReGenesis.

ReGenesis is a nationally recognized revitalization project that is focusing on 500 acres in the Arkwright area that includes the landfill. ReGenesis is supported by state, federal and local partners including the city and county of Spartanburg, EPA said.

“We’ve been dealing with issues around Arkwright for 13 years now,” White said. “It is time to deal with it.”

Extensive testing at Arkwright in 1999 identified a number of hazardous substances including inorganic compounds (heavy metals), pesticides, and organic chemicals. These substances were present in site soils, ground water, surface water, and sediment in nearby Fairforest Creek, EPA said.

The impermiable earthen cap planned for the site will seal off the hazardous substances and keep them out of ground water and surrounding streams, EPA said.

Arkwright is not a Superfund site.

The city became obligated for site remediation in 2007 under a Consent Agreement, EPA said.

EPA became involved in the Arkwight situation after citizen compaints in the late 1990s.

Memmott said the city has purchased several adjacent properties and will probably buy more before work starts on capping the landfill.

“It will be far cheaper to move the boundary out than to have to dig up the existing wastes and move them toward the center of the landfill,” he said.

In building the impermiable cap a certain slope will have to be maintained at the facility’s borders, he said, and it would not be possible to create the necessary slope with the site as it exists.

The site is a rectanglar property bounded by Fairforest Creek to the east, a former fertilizer plant to the north, and a chemical manufacturing facility to the west. Homes are located on the southern and noutheastern borders.

Mitchell said there will be some remediation work done at the former fetilizer plant site.

That work will not be the city’s responsibility, Memmott said.

A contractor will be selected around Jan. 1, he said. While work could begin as early as winter, rains will likely delay the startup of earth moving until drier weather in the spring.

“We estimate it will take about a year to get the cap in place, Memmott said. “I don’t foresee the work going on for longer than that.”

White said there is no potential at Arkwright for trapping and selling methane gas to industry.

“We’re just gonna put a top on this thing and move on,” he said.

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