Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Research shows illness related to landfills can be long-term, deadly

Imagine if over the years an number of your family members, neighbors, and even pets had become sick from a puzzling variety of diseases.

You've suspected it had something to do with the brown, frothy substance in the stream behind your home.

If you're a woman continue to imagine after five breast cancer surgeries, a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy, at age 52, you are more upset with the illnesses in your family and by the death of a 21 year-old neighbor to lung cancer, than your own problems.

Could this possibly be your future? If you live within a 100 yards of a landfill thats liner has deteriorated and is leaking the chemical sludge known as Leachate,' it could be possible.

These are true life circumstances of Judy M. Fittery as reported by John Macone, April 22, 1999, in The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

In the Environmental Research Foundation's May 8, 1991 edition of Rachel's Hazardous Waste News #232, Dr. Peater Montague Ph.D. said, "As we saw last week, the EPA readily admits that all landfills leak and that all landfills will, therefore, sooner or later, require a corrective action' program to clean them up."

The Agency knows it will happen because it has happed before and often. EPA officials say, "EPA has evidence that ground water has been contaminated by municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLF) on a local basis in many parts of the nation... Evaluation of 163 MSWLF case studies has indicated ground-water contamination or adverse trends in ground water quality at 146 of them."

That's a 90 percent contamination rate for ground-water beneath municipal solid waste landfills.

These tidbits of information can tell a lot about the proposed landfill to be placed in the Gurdon area. One is, this landfill will leak some time in the future. And two, what it will leak will not be pleasant.

While looking for information on the subject of the benefits or adverse affects of landfills, the only benefit found was it's good by comparison' aspect when being compared to an incinerator.

The possible adverse affects are too numerous to list in this article.

But two chemicals are apt to become problems, Mercury and Methane.

The Methane, the gas most often released from decomposing material, will be emitted by a landfill. Pipes will gather it up from deep inside a landfill and it will rise into the atmosphere or be burned off when reaching the top of the pipe.

Mercury could be released into the moisture of the landfill, flowing out with the highly acidic leachate. This fluid is funneled out of the bottom of a landfill and is then collected in a pool, of sorts.

Here the leachate sits until it become less acidic or is pumped to a local water treatment plant.

In Gurdon's case, after going through the waste water system it could be dumped into Caney Creek.

All the waste in the landfill will be sitting on top of a big, ol' plastic liner. This liner is suppose to prevent the leachate from seeping into the ground water, from which Gurdon residents drink.

Even with improvements to liners and other landfill management attempts, the odds are good, this liner will leak.

When calling the Arkansas Department of Health concerning health related issues for those persons in the surrounding area of a landfill, the office reached directs callers to Geoffry Little or Phillip Fields of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Solid Waste Landfills at (501)682-0601 and little@adeq.state.ar.us

Another question, to use the vernacular of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, can Gurdon's citizens request an Availability Session?'

Defined by the EPA as, An informal meeting at a public location where interested citizens can talk with EPA and state officials on a one-to-one basis.'

The public is invited to search the EPA's website at http://www.epa.gov/region6/states/ar.htm