Let's Talk Trash

This Wednesday, November 4, at 7:00 PM in the evening, Portland Metro will be talking trash.

“What our trash says when we’re gone” is part of the ongoing “Let’s Talk Trash” series put on by Metro.  Co-host for Wednesday's segment is the Oregon Historical Society.  The free event, which will feature a panel of trash experts, will be held at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Avenue, in Portland.

This is a great opportunity to tell Metro not only what trash you don't want to leave behind, but where you don't want to leave it.

Is it environmentally sound to dump garbage on a river?  Of course not.  But Waste Management would have you and everyone who lives in Portland Metro believe that their trash is hauled away to a safe depository where it will never harm the water, the soil, the air, or the next generation.

It's hard to blame the people who live and work in the Metro area.  Most of them have no idea how much of their trash makes its way to Riverbend.  Video on the Metro Website really shows only Arlington as the final resting ground for most of Metro's trash.  Even the PR for Wednesday's event reads as if all Metro's garbage heads east (emphasis added):

"The Oregon Historical Society and Metro invite you to a discussion about roles of landfills in dealing with our region’s waste. Where were they located and what is there now? How did we wind up deciding to send garbage to Eastern Oregon? What role will landfills play in our future?"  No mention of Riverbend or the South Yamhill River anywhere.

Stop the Dump will be at the meeting, bringing hand-outs and information to share with people who don't yet know how badly Metro is green-washing them.  Join us!  Help educate the people who send their waste to us about the environmental harm they are doing.

To learn more, contact Ken Ray at 503-797-1508 or by email at ken.ray@oregonmetro.gov or visit http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/lets-talk-trash-event-what-our-trash-says-when-were-gone and http://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/solid-waste-roadmap/lets-talk-trash.

Army Corps Comments Due Soon

The Army Corps of Engineers wants to hear from you!

As previously reported (see Riverbend Pursues Wetlands Permit below), the Corps is reviewing a plan filed by Waste Management that would allow dump operators to build a new access road by rerouting the infamous No-Name stream into a 200-foot culvert.  

This creek, which is just south of Riverbend Landfill's Trash Mountain, was historically fish-bearing, providing migrating salmon with resting pools and spawning grounds.  In recent years, the stream has been degraded by culverts installed beneath Highway 18 and by Waste Management and its predecessors.  Waste Management claims the plans it submitted to the Army Corps will "enhance" the stream, but that's hard to imagine as the water plunges into a 200-foot-long culvert just feet after emerging from under Highway 18.

Moreover, the Landfill's plans completely ignore the impact that the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake will inevitably have on the landfill and the flood plain it sits in.  This quake is already overdue, yet Waste Management continues to promise that the landfill will not be affected -- despite evidence that the existing garbage dump was engineered, at best, for only a 7.25 magnitude quake.  The Big One will be magnitude 9.0 at least.

The comment period for the Army Corps has been extended to October 22 -- that's next Thursday.  Comments should be submitted to both the Army Corps and DEQ.  Contact kinsey.m.friesen@usace.army.mil and 401publiccomments@deq.state.or.us to tell them how you feel!

Professional surveyor Leonard Rydell, who knows more about the landfill than most of us, has drafted a model comment for you to use or to modify in your own words.  The important thing is to speak out!

Leonard's model comment:

Subject:  US Army Corps of Engineers No: NWP-2015-322
Oregon Department of State Lands No: 07-0733

Dear Army Corps of Engineers, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and Oregon Department of State Lands:

We, the undersigned, are writing to request that the Army Corps of Engineers, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and the Oregon Department of State Lands deny Riverbend Landfill’'s Permit Application No's NWP-2015-322 and DSL 07-733.

Riverbend Landfill is the WORST POSSIBLE PLACE in the Willamette Valley to construct and expand a landfill.  The site is located in and next to the bottom lands of the South Yamhill River and is subject to meandering river channels.  The landfill is situated on liquefiable soils in wetlands, a formerly-designated floodway, and an existing flood plain, in a wet climate that receives 41 inches of rainfall a year, within the Cascadia Subduction Zone that historically has been subject to earthquakes with magnitudes up to 9.09.  A CSZ earthquake is overdue, and the existing landfill is not engineered to withstand a subduction quake of anything close to this magnitude.  In addition, flood waters annually lap up to the existing and proposed landfill berms at the edge of the re-mapped floodway.

The expanded landfill will be 156 to 166 feet high with the toe of the support berms in the flood plain.  After an earthquake, Riverbend’'s leachate will have only a few feet to flow to end up in the waters of the South Yamhill River.  Already last year, before expansion, 32 million gallons of toxic leachate were hauled from Riverbend Landfill to treatment plants outside of Yamhill County.

This expansion risk is unacceptable to the health and safety of our environment and watershed.  Please deny the permit.

Thank you.

Riverbend Pursues Wetlands Permit

In order to expand the landfill, Riverbend must build a new road across the so-called "No Name Creek" on the dump's south side.  In order to build that road, the landfill must intrude into a wetland -- in fact, Riverbend needs to bury the creek in a 200' long culvert.

In order to encroach on a wetland, the dump needs a permit.

Actually, several permits:  the federal Army Corps of Engineers, the Oregon Department of State Lands, and the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) must all issue permits related to water.  The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency may also weigh in.

Sounds like an impossible course to run, but Waste Management, which owns Riverbend, thinks it has these permits in its pocket because the change they have to make to the wetland is, in their words, an enhancement, not an encroachment.

First up is the Army Corps permit, which you can read about here.  The Army Corps wants to know whether the work Waste Management plans to do in the wetland harms or benefits water habitat.  However, as you will notice as you take out your magnifying glass, it's impossible to determine what exactly Riverbend proposes to do because the maps are not legible.  The Stop the Dump Coalition noticed this, too, and requested readable copies.  Contact Stop the Dump to see the actual maps.

You might also notice that the comment deadline is stated as a couple of weeks ago.  This has been extended to October 22 and may be extended further yet -- because the Army Corps has yet to make the current "wetland delineation" public.  The delineation is a description of the existing wetland area.  Decisions about whether a project illegally encroaches on a wetland are based on the current delineation.  Waste Management prepared one a couple of years ago that was accepted by State Lands.  Because the entire permit application is based on the delineation, comments will make sense only if they can reference the delineation.

The real issue, of course, is not whether channeling a creek in a hugely long culvert "enhances" a wetland.  The issue is whether a landfill should be allowed to expand next to a creek, period -- especially one subject to rupture in the big earthquake we are all expecting.  Leachate is already leaking from the landfill and may contaminate the creek whether it is enhanced or encroached.

Write the Army Corps.  Tell them landfills don't belong in wetlands.  Our waste should go to dry Eastern Oregon, where the community actually wants it.

Send written comments to kinsey.m.friesen@usace.army.mil or via US mail to:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Regulatory Branch
Ms. Kinsey Friesen
P.O. 2946
Portland, Oregon 97208-2946

Or you may send your comment to DEQ:

Email: 401publiccomments@deq.state.or.us (if using Microsoft Word, through version 7.0 only)
Mail:   Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Northwest Region 2020 S.W. 4th Avenue, Suite 400, Portland, Oregon 97201-4953, Attn: 401 Water Quality Certification Coordinator
Fax:   (503) 229-6957

LUBA to Hear Expansion Appeal on September 17

Next Thursday, September 19, the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals -- LUBA -- will hear arguments in the lawsuit filed by the Stop the Dump Coalition against the expansion of Riverbend Landfill.

Lawyers for Stop the Dump and other expansion opponents will try to convince LUBA's panel of judges that the procedure the County followed in approving the expansion was flawed and that the evidence the County relied on was legally inadequate.

One big bone of contention is the Farm Assessment submitted by Waste Management, which owns the dump.  Expansion opponents argue that the Assessment mischaracterized both the nature of farm activities surrounding the landfill and the extent to which the landfill's operation impacts those practices.

Another key point involves the unannounced visits that County Commissioners made to the landfill and other communications between Commissioners and Waste Management personnel.  Opponents were not privy to these visits and communications, and Stop the Dump's lawyers say that violates the law.

Besides the Stop the Dump Coalition, appellants include the Willamette Valley Wineries Association, McPhillips Farms, and Friends of Yamhill County.  The argument is open to the public.

IF YOU GO:

"Stop the Dump Coalition et al v. Yamhill County"

LUBA - Case #2015-036  

9/17/2015 at 1:30 PM

Land Board Room - 1st Floor

Department of State Lands Building

775 Summer Street NE (between Union and D Streets), Salem 97301

Park & Pay – Yellow Lot - bounded by Center, Summer, Marion, and Winter Streets.
Daily parking is available in the Capitol Mall area Yellow Lot at a self-serve park and pay machine.  $6/day.  Payment only by debit/credit VISA/MC (from machine in lot).

From Yellow Lot walk 1.5 blocks north on Summer Street to the State Lands Building.

Let them drink leachate!

by Leonard Rydell

Some statistics about the original landfill:

• 10% of Riverbend Landfill is in the Floodway as delineated by FEMA in 1982.
• 52.4% of Riverbend Landfill is in the 1982 Floodway and Floodplain (the "floodway" is where river water flows during a flood; the "floodplain" is the rest of the land area that floods when a river overflows).
• 29% of Riverbend landfill (Cells No. 1, 2, and 3) are not lined; portions of these cells are below ground water levels.

You will be happy to know that Yamhill County has "solved" these problems with the floodway and floodplain -- not by moving the landfill out of the water flow, but by redrawing the floodway lines.

Waste Management wants us to believe that Riverbend Landfill is a modern, state-of-the-art, lined landfill.  It is designed with a top liner, a bottom liner, and a secondary bottom liner.  The top liner prevents rain water from getting into the landfill.  The bottom liner collects the water that somehow penetrates the top liner, and the secondary bottom liner collects the leachate that makes it through both the top and bottom liners.  With these precautions, one would think that leachate would not represent a problem to the river or to ground water.

However, remember that 29% of the landfill bottom is not lined (Cells 1, 2, and 3).  Out of the million of gallons of rain that falls on each acre of Riverbend Landfill every year, about 20% is hauled out of Yamhill County as leachate (9 tanker loads a day in 2013).  Leachate generation has increased from 19,279,540 gallons in 2013 to 32,225,199 gallons in 2014, a 67% increase.  This is a whopping 37% of the rain that fell on the top liner of the landfill in 2014.  This leachate is collected below the top liner and between the two bottom liners and from ground water in Cells 1, 2, and 3.

The leachate is too toxic to treat at any biological sewer treatment plant in Yamhill County.  Instead the leachate must be hauled out of county by exhaust-spewing trucks -- and across bridges and roads that probably will not be standing or passable after the 9.0 Cascadia earthquake even if the leachate collection, pumping and storage systems remain intact.

We have evidence, however, that the leachate system will not continue operating in the event of an earthquake or even a bad storm.  In January/February 2014, heavy rains and snow overwhelmed the existing system.  The weather conditions made it impossible to haul leachate away from the landfill.  But the leachate kept flowing, and the on-site collection ponds came close to overflowing.  Waste Management's response was to add a couple of new storage tanks -- not curbing leachate production.

The South Yamhill River is heavily used for irrigation of food crops.  The City of Newberg gets its water downstream from gravel deposits next to the Willamette River, and Wilsonville gets its water from the Willamette River.  Do we want our neighbors, our food, and domesticated animals drinking leachate?

Express your opinion.  Contact Yamhill County Commissioners ("Mary Starrett" <starrettm@co.yamhill.or.us>

"Stan Primozich"<primozichs@co.yamhill.or.us> and "Allan Springer" <springera@co.yamhill.or.us>) and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (Dick Pedersen, Director pedersen.dick@deq.state.or.us. 

Demand accountability.  Tell them, “Enough is Enough,” and ask them to stop Riverbend Landfill expansion and start requiring actions to clean up the mess.