Comments on Waste Management's (WM) proposed 490,000 cubic yard vertical expansion of Riverbend Landfill are due to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in one day -- by 5:00 pm tomorrow, Monday, May 8.
The expansion -- variously called a "side slope modification" or "final grading plan" -- would allow Riverbend to remain open another year while WM awaits a decision from the Oregon Supreme Court on a much larger expansion (29 acres) and Portland Metro debates whether to prohibit its waste from going to landfills that are expanding.
If you don't know much about the proposed vertical expansion, Leonard Rydell, one of the dump's original engineers and surveyors, has neatly summarized the issues (below). Read and comment!
I have just spent several days reviewing engineering reports and construction plans for Riverbend Landfill. It should have never grown to 86 acres and 164 feet high. You can Google Earth Riverbend Landfill to see its location, 52% of which is in the original flood plain, and now 350' from the eroding river bank.
• It is located in a wet climate with 39" of rainfall a year. This is over one million gallons of water annually falling on each acre.
• It is located in a flood plain and floodway of the meandering South Yamhill River. Water laps up to the 5,200-foot perimeter berm every year.
• If the berm fails (it has been repaired several times), garbage has only a few feet to go to be in flood waters.
• It is located upstream of the water intake works for several cities.
• It is located upstream of water intakes for irrigation of food crops.
• Riverbend Landfill is located in Oregon’s premier Wine Country, next to a major tourist highway to the Oregon Coast
• The South Yamhill River is a 303(d) listed river for salmon (ie, the river is in bad shape).
• The original Cells 1, 2 and 3 are unlined and lack compacted clay bottoms; portions of these cells are below ground water levels. These three cells generated much of the 10,386,725 gallons of leachate collected from Cells 1/5P in 2015. Leachate is contaminated ground water that is pumped out of the landfill and treated.
• The proposal is to add 490,000 cubic yards on to of Cells 1, 2, and 3 at slopes greater than allowed by Oregon Administrative Rules.
• The expansion design is based on one earthquake every 2,400 years. We have had nineteen 9.0+ earthquakes in the last 10,000 years and forty-one 8.0+ earthquakes in the last 10,000 years.
• Each earthquake of that magnitude will have fore shocks and after shocks at a slightly lesser magnitude. Japan’s 9.1 March 2011 earthquake had five 7.1 to 7.2 fore and after shocks within a four month period.
• The proposed design is based on the upper limit of movement in the landfill being no more than 6" to 12", which is the 35-year-old “generally accepted practice in California,” which is prone to slip zone quakes. Riverbend is not is California, it does not have slip zone earthquakes, it has subduction zone earthquakes. As stated by Chris Goldfinger in a CNN report, “"You're going to have three to five minutes of shaking, and if you're used to earthquakes in California, they typically last 15 to 30 seconds and before you are really sure of what is happening, it is over” and “Cascadia can make an earthquake almost 30 times more energetic than the San Andreas....” The California standard should not be applied to Riverbend Landfill.
• Riverbend has no plan or funding to respond to earthquakes or damage from earthquakes.
• Riverbend generated 39,517,421 gallons of leachate in 2015 (the amount of leachate has increased every year). On average, a truck load of leachate was hauled from Riverbend to Salem or Hillsboro for treatment every one hour and 20 minutes, every day during 2015. Funding set aside for leachate management is woefully inadequate; the funding model anticipates the landfill generating only 296,958 gallons of leachate requiring treatment in 2044.
• Cities downstream that may be affected are McMinnville, Dayton, Newberg, Wilsonville, Oregon City, West Linn and Portland.
Comments should be e-mailed to DEQ care of Bob Schwarz, Riverbend's permit writer, at schwarz.bob@deq.state.or.us by 5:00 pm, Pacific Standard Time, May 8, 2017. Unfortunately DEQ will not answer your questions before then. You can, however, ask that your questions be made part of the record.
No comments:
Post a Comment