by Susan Meredith, Riverbend Landfill neighbor
November 24, 2016
Once again, the South Yamhill river is flooding. The fields next to Hwy 18 southwest of Riverbend Landfill were flooded by Thanksgiving Day. From my house I can see the floodwaters as they pile up against the perimeter berm at Riverbend, and the river has not even crested yet; that will not happen until tomorrow (Friday) night. This flooding has become nearly an annual event; in some years the river water rises several times during the same year.
An important consequence of this flooding is a concomitant rise in the groundwater table beneath the dump, especially in the area of the original unlined cells. These cells, on the dump's river side, are not lined with the now-required high density polyethylene (HDPE) liners, only poorly compacted soil. This provides no barrier to the floodwaters, which now will be HIGHER than the lower level of the waste in these cells.
As a result, floodwaters are now, and for the next several days, will continue to "flush through" the decomposed waste in these cells, carrying whatever toxins are in the waste downstream. Tim Steiber, the former Executive Director of the Yamhill County Soil and Water Conservation District, first pointed this situation out to the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) more than 6 years ago. The problem was further confirmed by Mark Yinger Associates, the hydrologist who authored the Yinger Hydrology Report on Riverbend in July 2015.
This situation is unconscionable; it impacts every farmer, person, and animal using this river water downstream, and will continue forever because the only remedy is to remove all the waste in these cells and close them off permanently.
Neighbors, the Stop the Dump Coalition, and our allies have repeatedly raised this issue to Waste Management (WM), Riverbend's Texas-based corporate owner, but our concerns have fallen on deaf ears. WM is not about to do anything about water contamination, and, apparently, neither is DEQ. What ever happened to "using best practices" as required by the landfill's DEQ operating permit?
Update: Leonard Rydell, Engineer of Record for Riverbend Landfill during the time Cells 1, 2, and 3 were under construction, has notified us that those cells were not "poorly compacted" as author Meredith believed; the soil lining those three original landfill cells was in fact not compacted at all. DEQ was aware of this but gave the landfill's owners a pass.
Editor's note: Contact DEQ (Bob Schwarz at schwarz.bob@deq.state.or.us) and Waste Management (Nicholas Godfrey, current Riverbend District manager, at NGodfrey@wm.com) to let them know that this situation is intolerable.
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