New group seeks ramp to landfill
By Kelli Young Repository STAFF WRITER BOLIVAR - Pike Township residents began nearly a decade ago asking the region’s solid waste district to rid their neighborhood roads of smelly, noisy and dirty garbage trucks.
They’ve attended Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Joint Solid Waste Management District meetings en masse and individually to beg the board to fund construction of an Interstate 77 ramp, which would direct the trucks to the Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility and away from roads near their homes.
Residents renewed their plea for the ramp Friday — this time with a more unified voice.
They have formed the group, Ramp Access Means Progress and Safety (RAMP), to lobby for the ramp’s construction at Gracemont Street SW.
But the new group’s objective may undermine the mission of a decades-old, environmental citizen’s group that wants to keep the landfill from expanding.
“If the board says, ‘Let’s do the ramp,’ then you have practically endorsed the expansion of the landfill,” said attorney Robert G. Rubin, who represents the older group, Club 3000.
“A ramp doesn’t solve the problem. A ramp just makes it easier for them to mine the gold,” said Rubin, during his comments about recent appeals court rulings.
LANDFILL: A FEW YEARS LEFT
Club 3000 members believe that by stopping Countywide’s expansion, truck traffic will cease because the landfill will be too full to accept any more waste. Tim Vandersall, general manager of Countywide’s owner Republic Waste Services of Ohio, said after the meeting that the landfill has “a few years of life” left without expansion. He said the company has been working on the expanded section for more than a year.
RAMP members said they don’t want the landfill to expand, but they fear for their safety because semis slide on the hills when it snows. The problem, they say, has been going on for years.
In April, the solid waste board voted to withdraw the $3 million it had set aside for the new ramp. Some board members at the time believed a settlement agreement between Republic Waste and Pike Township in September 2004 obligated Republic to pay for the ramp.
The settlement said Pike officials would agree to drop its objection to the landfill’s 170-acre expansion if Republic agreed to pay the costs of the ramp not covered by government funding.
CASES reopened
That deal was put in jeopardy this week when the Ohio 5th District Court of Appeals essentially reopened three court cases related to the landfill.
In one of the cases, the appeals panel directed Stark County Common Pleas Judge Lee Sinclair to reconsider whether a Bolivar resident who owns a farm next to the landfill should be able to contest the consent agreement. If so, Sinclair then must determine whether the resident has good reasons not to execute the settlement.
In other business, Executive Director David Held reported to the board that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s deadline to complete the joint 10-year waste disposal and recycling plan has been extended from Dec. 31 to March 31.
Held said the deadline extension also allows the district to more fully develop and adopt new landfill and waste facility regulations.
Reach Repository writer Kelli Young at (330) 580-8339.
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