EQC Receives Yinger Report

Stop the Dump Coalition President Ilsa Perse and member Brian Doyle delivered the recent Yinger Report to the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) at last week's EQC meeting.  The report, prepared by hydrologist Mark Yinger, uses data prepared by consultants hired by Waste Management to show that leachate is indeed leaking from Riverbend Landfill.

Waste Management (WM) is the Texas-based corporate owner of the landfill.

As reported on this blog (see sidebar), Yinger, a well-respected hydro-geologist who specializes in landfill hydrology, reported in late December 2017 that WM's own data confirm that leachate is not only leaking from the oldest, unlined areas of Riverbend Landfill but has already impacted groundwater quality at two early detection monitoring wells.

Yinger's report confirmed an earlier study he submitted in 2015, also based on WM data.  That report in turn confirmed an analysis prepared several years earlier by Tim Steiber, former Director of the Yamhill County Soil and Water District.

All this information has been submitted to the EQC before, with no action by the Commission or the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which the Commission leads.  Stop the Dump is hopeful that newly-appointed Commissioners and new Director Richard Whitman will treat this information differently and require a thorough review of ground water contamination at the landfill. 

It's Official: Riverbend Leaks

Mark Yinger, a well-respected hydro-geologist who specializes in landfill hydrology, reported in late December 2017 that leachate is not only leaking from the oldest, unlined areas of Riverbend Landfill but has already impacted groundwater quality at two early detection monitoring wells.

Yinger was hired by Stop the Dump Coalition to analyze the detailed Annual Environmental Monitoring Reports (AEMR) submitted to the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) by Waste Management, Inc., the dump's Texas-based corporate owner.

Yinger studied groundwater tests from two monitoring wells, MW-5A and MW-12A, the closest down-gradient wells to the oldest unlined areas (cells) of the landfill.  Data from these wells indicate that leachate leaking from soil-lined waste cells has impacted groundwater quality.  Moreover, the magnitude of the impact to groundwater is increasing at an accelerating rate.

An earlier Yinger report analyzed AEMR data through 2014. That report concluded that “From 1992 through 2014, the concentrations of chlorobenzene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene have not decreased, but have in fact at times increased…. Landfill gas extraction, which began in 1997, has not reduced the concentration of chlorobenzene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene in groundwater at MW-5A.”  These chemicals are "leachate indicators." If they are present at the monitoring sites, so is leachate from the dump.

The new report confirms the earlier findings and notes that "concentrations of the leachate indicators...have increased at compliance monitoring well MW-12A, and by 2016 exceeded site specific concentration limits.... The concentrations of the leachate indicators at MW-5A are much higher than the site specific concentration limits established for compliance well MW-12A."

"Site specific concentration limits" are maximums established by law. DEQ is aware of these exceedences, yet recently permitted Waste Management to pile 500,000 new tons of garbage on top of the leaking cells.

Yinger’s report corroborates the concerns of citizens and Stop the Dump Coalition that effective cleanup will be impossible once the leaks are buried under the additional garbage.  STDC has called on DEQ to halt the addition of new waste until the violations cited by the Yinger report are addressed.

You can ask DEQ to take action. The state Environmental Quality Commission, which runs DEQ, is meeting January 18 in Portland.  Attend or call in (info available from DEQ by January 11) to make your voice heard!