Meet Suzanne Bonamici!

by Stop The Dump Staff

4/29/2013 12:53:08 AM

Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici is coming to McMinnville for a town hall Monday, April 29.  Let her know how you feel about an unsafe dump sitting on the banks of your river.  Tell her it's time to close Riverbend -- not to let this Trash Mountain expand onto 60 acres of the country's best farm land!

McMinnville Town Hall Meeting
Date: April 29, 2013
Time: 6:00-7:00pm
Location: Chemeketa Community College, Yamhill Valley Campus, Building 1, Room 101, 288 NE
Norton Lane, McMinnville, OR 97128

Appeals Court Rejects Right to Hearing

by Susan Watkins

4/25/2013 1:45:44 AM

The Oregon Court of Appeals has rejected landfill neighbors' request for a hearing on the dump's compliance with land use laws.  The Court ruled that the County's 1992 decision upholding Riverbend's right to fill the entire PWS zone with garbage still applies today.  The decision means that the County has abdicated any control over Waste Management's operation of the dump.

The County must issue a LUCS -- a Land Use Compatibility Statement -- before the dump can expand.  In this case, the LUCS was issued for the 4-story high MSE berm Waste Management wants to build on the Highway 18 side of the dump.  Although the berm would not expand the landfill's on-the-ground footprint, the tall wall will allow Riverbend to expand its capacity by an additional million tons of garbage.  Assuming DEQ issues a permit as expected, Waste Management can proceed to construct the berm.

The Court cited a decision the County made in favor of the landfill in 1992.  That decision in turn relied on the Board of Commissioners' 1980 reasoning in initially approving a landfill at the Riverbend site.  The original 1980 decision contemplated a much smaller landfill (7-9 feet above Highway 18, not 135 feet!) that would be returned to farming one 20-acre cell at a time.  The County's 1992 decision translated that original limited approval into a blanket approval for any landfill use within the PWS zone.

It is hard to believe that a landfill approved over 30 years ago can significantly expand and fundamentally change its operation without ever having those changes subject to land use review, but this is essentially what the Court of Appeals ruled.

Please contact the Commissioners to express your dismay over this result!  Yamhill County residents and businesses deserve a hearing on landfill growth.

Kathy George:  georgek@county.yamhill.or.us

Alan Springer:  springera@county.yamhill.or.us

Mary Stern:  sternm@county.yamhill.or.us

Smell Meeting Tuesday April 23rd

by Ilsa Perse

4/23/2013 1:42:11 AM

Tuesday April 23rd is the semi-annual Riverbend Air Quality Meeting -- time to talk smell!

Waste Management has been quizzing school groups that come to the dump. While the children are at the bottom of the trash mound, they are asked "How does it smell?"  At the bottom the smell is not so bad, so when the kids say they can't smell anything, Waste Management turns their statements into an ad.   WM personnel don't ask the kids what the smell is like at the top of Dump Mountain or on the road or at Linfield College or Sue Buel School, Albertson's, or Roth's.  That is where you come in, because you know how bad the dump smells at all those places.

Keep the pressure on DEQ -- let them know the smell isn't getting any better.

Pizza at 6:00, Meeting at 7:00

McMinnville Community Center, 2250 McDaniel Lane, McMinnville.

Can't come to the meeting???  You can send an email to Gary Andes: andes.gary@deq.state.or.us to tell him about the odors.  Please copy Bob Schwarz on your email: SCHWARZ.Bob@deq.state.or.us and also Yamhill County's Sherrie Mathison: mathiss@co.yamhill.or.us

In addition, you can contact the office of the State Representative for the area around Riverbend, District 23.  Some of us have met with Rep. Thompson, and he seems interested in learning more about the dump.  He needs to hear from you!!!

4/23/2013 6:00:00 PM

2250 McDaniel Lane
McMinnville
OR
97128

Map

La Rambla to Host Benefit Dinner

by Ilsa Perse

4/10/2013 2:27:02 AM

Here's a pleasant change:  Instead of spending time at a difficult meeting, waving a sign on a street corner, or writing a letter, join us for dinner. 

Kathy Stoller from La Rambla Restaurant in McMinnville has generously offered to donate a percent of the sales on this Sunday night, April 14, to Stop the Dump/Waste Not. We are thrilled by her generous offer.

Here are the details:

TIME: 5:30 for wine and hanging out;   6:00 or so.... for dinner
WHERE:  La Rambla 238 NE Third St, McMinnville
WHEN: April 14th--Sunday

Kathy asks that you call La Rambla to tell them you are coming----503-435-2126.    Easier than writing DEQ!

See you Sunday!

We THANK YOU for all your support!

(And if you really need to get out to a meeting this week, Waste Management will discuss plans for the so-called buffer lands that surround the dump on Wednesday and Thursday evenings:  Wednesday, April 10, in McMinnville, 5:30 - 7:30 pm at the Senior Center, 2250 NE McDaniel Lane; Thursday, April 11, in Newberg, 5:30-7:30 pm, Chehalem Cultural Center, 415 E Sheridan Street.  Let them know that the dump needs to close and the land, mostly EFU, should remain in farming.)

4/14/2013 5:30:00 PM

238 NE Third
McMinnville
OR
97128

Map

Last Chance to Contact DEQ!

by Ilsa Perse

4/5/2013 3:37:22 PM

Update:  According to the News-Register, more than 300 people contacted DEQ about the berm, half of them after the hearing.  A decision is expected by May 6.  Thanks to you all!

On March 28, more than 100 people attended a formal comment hearing to let the state Department of Environmental Quality know what Yamhill County residents think about expanding the dump.

DEQ reps first told the meeting that the proposed MSE berm has only one purpose:  to allow another 1,000,000 tons of garbage to be dumped at the landfill, extending Riverbend's life by 2 years - through 2016.  Over 200,000 cubic yards of dirt, rocks, and gravel will be required to construct the wall.  More than 60% of this material will come from off-site, requiring 9,000 tractor-trailers to travel Yamhill County's already beat-up roads. 

The remaining 40% of material will come from “on site.”  No one is saying from where on-site the material will be sourced.  From the vulnerable lands between the dump and the river?  From the surrounding high-value farmland that Waste Management owns?  DEQ is not concerned.  Monitoring this additional degradation of the land is not DEQ's problem.

Moreover, DEQ did not require Waste Management to engineer the wall to meet Oregon's highest seismic building standards. 

More than 35 speakers voiced opposition to the proposed wall; no one spoke in favor.  Members of the Grand Ronde and other tribes spoke eloquently about the destruction of land that has belonged to their ancestors since time immemorial.  This was the first time these local residents have spoken publicly about the landfill.  They scheduled another rally at DEQ headquarters in Portland today.

Before the formal hearing March 28th, dozens of citizens demonstrated on Highway 99W near the McMinnville Senior Center, waving signs, beating drums, and wearing costumes to draw attention to DEQ’s lack of interest in regulating Waste Management’s practices at Riverbend Landfill.

Waste Not and Stop the Dump Coalition want to thank everyone who participated in this difficult and emotional evening.

Hunger Strike Update

by Susan Watkins

4/2/2013 9:31:32 PM

Note:  Ramsey posted this video on the 9th.

Ramsey McPhillips, heir to and owner of the historic 150-year-old McPhillips Farm adjacent to Riverbend Landfill, has had enough.  He has attended countless meetings, sent hundreds of letters and emails, and filed lawsuits, all in a so-far vain attempt to persuade authorities to let Riverbend Landfill close when it reaches its current engineered capacity in 2014.  Fed up with the lack of serious attention state and county authorities are paying to the deleterious effects the dump is having on the livability of his farm, he has decided to strike back.

In this case, the "strike" is a hunger strike.

Beginning today, April 3, McPhillips has vowed to go without solid food until proposed expansions of the landfill are stopped.  "I don't make this decision lightly," McPhillips said in a film announcing the strike.  But after decades of fighting Waste Management, the dump's out-of-state owner, McPhillips had to take a stand, even if the "stand" was himself.

"The idea of importing millions of tons of garbage to put on this beautiful, salmon-bearing river tributary, on the best soil in the state" is something he says he can no longer tolerate.  McPhillips Farm straddles the South Yamhill River.  An elegant 60-year-old house, the newer of two homes on the property, sits on a bluff that juts into the river.  "It's the only site like this on the river," McPhillips says, "and we are being driven out by the noise, smell, vermin, and pollution from next door."

McPhillips has asked people who sympathize with his efforts to contribute to the Stop the Dump Coalition, which has taken legal action, hired experts, and held educational events to inform the public about the hazards of leaving unmonitored waste on a river that provides habitat to threatened fish, drinking water to thousands of downstream residents, and irrigation water for farms.  He also urges people opposed to expansion to call the Oregon Department of Environment Quality (DEQ) at 503-229-5263 by Friday, April 5 at 5:00 PM.  That is the deadline for commenting on a proposed 1,000,000 ton expansion of the landfill.

Contributions to the Stop the Dump Coalition can be made via Paypal on this website or can be sent to STDC at PO Box 1744, McMinnville, OR 97128.

A lawsuit McPhillips and other landfill neighbors filed in 2012 is still in the courts.  In that case, McPhillips charged that Yamhill County had issued a "land use compatibility statement" (LUCS) without holding a public hearing or determining whether the current landfill meets County land use rules and landfill approval conditions.  The LUCS allows the DEQ to authorize the expansion cited above.  The Court of Appeal is expected to rule on McPhillips' suit by May 7.

To learn more about McPhillips' decision to resort to a hunger strike, visit the Stop Riverbend Landfill Facebook page here.  He plans to update his story daily.

North Korea Bombs Landfill!

by Jo Keson-Yu

4/1/2013 2:40:32 AM

North Korea made good on its threat to annihilate significant US landmarks early this morning when it bombed Riverbend Landfill, a stinky, leaking dump on the South Yamhill River in Yamhill County, Oregon.

According to radio reports from the state-run [North] Korean Central News Agency monitored by US diplomatic personnel in Seoul, South Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un targeted Riverbend because "Waste Management has allocated $4 million to keep the site open in the face of mounting local opposition.  This must be a pretty important site to be worth that much to the world's largest sack of garbage [sic]."

US military experts estimate that bombs dropped during the three-hour midnight raid released more than 480 megatons of energy, which just happens to be the exact equivalent of the M9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake that experts expect to occur within 50 km of the site sometime in the next 1-200 years.

The blast was so strong that the historic McPhillips farmhouse, recently vacated due to the landfill's horrid stench, was lifted from its foundation and redeposited a half-mile down Highway 18, coming to rest on land owned by Waste Management near a hazelnut farm where the landfill doesn't stink.

"We're going to leave the house there and claim adverse possession," McPhillips said.  "After all, we've been paying the taxes for 150 years."

As experts had predicted, the power of the explosion caused landfill liners to deform as much as 10" at the bottom and up to 25" at the top, rupturing the gas lines and wells that criss-cross the 85-acre, 16-story tall pile of trash and sending tons of household chemical waste, plastics, and recyclables into the river.

Much of the waste and toxins are expected to reach Portland by tomorrow evening, a fate some landfill observers call fitting given that much of the waste originated there.

In a stunning policy reversal, County Commissioners and DEQ personnel initially turned down the landfill's request to immediately allow them to construct a new dump three miles to the north in downtown McMinnville on land donated by the local Chamber of Commerce.

Industry insiders say not to count Waste Management out, however.  An analyst who requested anonymity because no public announcement has yet been made confided that "Waste Management is secretly grateful to the North Koreans.  Riverbend might look like nothing but a 100-foot-deep hole in the ground full of river water, but the site is still zoned PWS and FEMA maps still place it outside the floodway.  That hole can hold 13.5 million tons of crap, exactly what the dump held before the bombing.  If WM is lucky, the Cascadia event will then wash the new pile of trash away, and they can keep the thing going another 25 years."

Landfill opponents are not amused, but hope that you are!  April fool!