Ohio Is Cheap Place To Unload Waste
UPDATED: 7:13 pm EST
November 3, 2005
WARREN, Ohio -- Hazardous materials are being dumped in
landfills across northeast Ohio and some neighbors are concerned. Newschannel 5's Chief Investigtor Duane Pohlman discovered that Ohio's borders are wide open, creating an enviromential disaster.
Pohlman: This mountain ...
Mark Durno, EPA Emergency Response Coordinator: "It's the second highest point in Trumbull County."
Pohlman: ... Is made of trash.
Debbie Roth, neighbor: "This is Mount Trashmore."
Pohlman: It is a monument to how Ohio is getting dumped on.
Amie Crowder, neighbor: "Ohio's known as the Heart of it all becomes the Dump of it all!"
Pohlman: For years, the owners of the Warren Hills Landfill accepted load after load of waste -- much of it from New York. The result was an environmental disaster, where children ...
Conner, 7: "My whole entire body was covered in blood."
Pohlman: And adults alike, were overcome ...
Crowder: "We all have asthma issues."
Pohlman: By plumes of gas ...
Paige, 3: "It smells really bad. Nasty!"
Pohlman: And toxic smoke from fires that ignited in the piles.
Durno: "This community literally gets gassed out."
Pohlman: Mark Durno, an emergency response coordinator for the U.S. EPA, came here after the landfill was declared an "urgent public health hazard."
Durno: "Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong."
Pohlman: Warren Hills Landfill is now an EPA "Superfund cleanup" site. Durno and his team are draining toxic water.
Durno: "That's leachate. A leachate lake."
Pohlman: And sealing off the garbage by capping it with clay. To understand how this happened, you have to understand what Warren Hills was -- a construction and demolition, or C&D, landfill. In Ohio, 69 active C&D landfills now dot our state, including six active sites in Cuyahoga County alone. Because C&D landfills are supposed to accept only waste from construction and demolition sites, Ohio law treats these dumps as non-dangerous. Critics, like the Ohio Environmental Council, say Ohio's laws are lax, making our state the place to dump.
Jack Shaner, Ohio Environmental Council: "Ohio has got the gates wide open on the eastern border of Ohio, and it's pouring in."
Pohlman:While nearly every other state has stiff regulations, Ohio doesn't even require plastic liners to prevent leaching or vents for dealing with gas. In New York, where regulations are tougher, it costs three times what it does to dump in Ohio -- $60 a ton in New York and $20 a ton here. In 2003, Ohio EPA estimated almost 3 million tons in our C&D landfills came from other states -- that's 40 percent.
Shaner: "This is the biggest loophole ever known to man and they are driving trainload after trainload a day from the East Coast to this state."
Pohlman: And the poster child for the consequences is Warren Hills, where neighbors blame the dump for their health problems.
Alex, 8: "I have asthma from the dump."
Tyler, 10: "Whenever I wake up, I can't really see out of my eyes.
Conner: "The dump smell just started irritating me inside my nose. So I just started bleeding."
