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State Wants City's Past Dug Up

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By CHRISTIAN M. WADE

cwade@tampatrib.com

Published: December 21, 2008

Updated: 12/21/2008 12:22 am

TAMPA - The city's underground is pockmarked with now-dormant landfills, most dating to an era when municipal dumps were holes in the ground that needed filling.

By the late 1960s, the practice of dumping the city's garbage on private land was abandoned, and many of the sites were paved over or redeveloped as shopping plazas, houses, apartment complexes, playgrounds, parks and public schools.

What remains buried under the surface concerns state regulators.

This year, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a mandate to the city: Investigate potential contamination from 49 old landfills and, if required, clean them up, or face fines and enforcement action for violating environmental regulations.

City officials, faced with the possibility of having to spend millions of dollars, are balking at the demands. They argue that there is no serious public health risk.

"Just because it's an old landfill doesn't mean it's contaminated," said Tonja Brickhouse, director of the city's solid waste department. "There's no evidence of contamination."

Documents obtained from DEP tell a different story.

Tests conducted by environmental consultants through the years have found higher-than-acceptable levels of methane, arsenic, cyanide, mercury and other toxic chemicals.

Many of the groundwater and soil samples were taken decades ago, and DEP wants more extensive testing to be conducted to figure out whether the waste should be removed.

In an April 14 letter to the city, DEP identified nine of the city's historical landfills as priorities with "the potential to pose the greatest risks to public health and safety."

Among them are three former landfills near public schools - Pizzo Elementary, Roland Park Middle School, Lockhart Elementary and Young Middle Magnet School - where previous tests revealed elevated levels of methane and other volatile contaminants.

Other sites include Rogers Park Golf Course, parks such as Tacoma Trail, McKay Bay and Rowlett, the former McDonald Training Center, Busch Gardens' Adventure Island water park, and the Cameron Bayshore and Arbour Ponds apartment complexes.

"Our records indicate these sites are out of compliance with state rules," said DEP spokeswoman Pamala Vazquez. "We need to make sure there's no risk to the public."

Although city and DEP officials say they have been working to resolve the dispute, both sides appear to be digging in for what could become a protracted legal challenge.

Gathering Information

There have been no known cases of people who live near the old dump sites getting sick and no reports of exploding methane pockets where the gas has been detected. But the potential for such problems has been documented in other sites across the country, and environmental regulators are taking a fresh look at health risks posed by old landfills.

Tampa officials began cataloging the landfills about two decades ago, cobbling together information from property tax records, deeds, maps and other historical documents. They pinpointed 49, encompassing 555 parcels, or about 1,173 acres. The dumps date to the 1940s, and possibly earlier.

Dan Fahey, director of the city's Historic Landfill Program, said details on the old landfills are "sketchy," and in most cases it's not clear who originally owned the properties.

"We have tried to determine, as best we could, where these old landfills were and what was buried on the sites," he said. "The records from that era were not the greatest."

Some were operated by the city, but most belonged to private landowners who gave the city and others permission to bury trash and debris on their properties, Fahey said.

The city hired a private consulting firm, HSA Engineers and Scientists, that has pulled together previous site studies and conducted field tests. To date, the city has spent more than $1 million on environmental studies on the landfills.

"We've been at this for a long time," Fahey said. "And we're still gathering information."

In early 2005, DEP adopted tough regulations giving the agency the authority to force municipal and county governments to investigate and clean up inactive landfills.

The changes apply statewide, and municipalities across Florida will be required to meet similar demands to conduct extensive testing on sites formerly occupied by landfills.

In unincorporated areas of Hillsborough County, there are about 130 old landfills that could be subject to the new rules. In neighboring Pasco, Pinellas and Polk counties, figures on the number of former landfills are not available, but officials there say they are aware of a dozen or so in each county.

DEP officials argue that regardless of who owned the land at the time, the responsibility for protecting the public from the impact of the landfills lies with local governments.

"The public is now at risk because of the actions of the city," Larry Morgan, DEP's deputy chief counsel, said during a recent meeting with city officials.

Tampa officials said they were surprised and disappointed by the change in DEP policy, and they argue that the regulatory agency's records on the sites are outdated and incomplete.

For now, they don't intend to comply with DEP's demands.

"The city does not have the ability to remove the source material at all of its sites," Nancy McCann, the city's urban environmental coordinator, wrote in a May 20 letter responding to DEP's mandate. "The concept of 'closing' all of these landfills has never been contemplated by the city nor discussed by the DEP during any numerous meetings."

'New Rules Don't Apply To Us'

For the city, the Department of Environmental Protection mandate couldn't come at a worse time.

Tampa is facing a record budget shortfall of more than $35 million in next year's fiscal budget, and the city's solid waste department is given only about $200,000 a year for the Historic Landfills Program. Most of that money goes toward consulting fees.

The city can't afford more extensive testing and is prepared to challenge DEP's rules, if necessary, in court, City Attorney Chip Fletcher said.

"We are willing to work with DEP officials on a resolution," he said. "But we believe that the city has a very strong legal argument that the DEP's new rules don't apply to us."

Among the arguments is that DEP's demands amount to an unfunded mandate that is being imposed on the city retroactively, making it a violation of the state constitution.

Fletcher said nearly 60 percent of the landfills are on private land and that the city can't spend that amount of taxpayer money to clean up property that is not owned by the city.

In a legal brief prepared by Assistant City Attorney Cathy Ginster, it is also argued that DEP's policy applies only to landfills where hazardous wastes were dumped before 1969, the year laws on solid waste regulation were approved by the Legislature.

The city also argues that requiring it to investigate and clean the sites could have a "chilling effect" on the state's Brownfields program, which gives developers tax breaks in exchange for buying land with contamination and redeveloping it for other uses.

Many of the former landfills were redeveloped under agreements with the Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Commission, which was given authority by DEP years ago to oversee building on the sites if the owners meet minimum standards.

City officials say that could entangle the county and property owners in the dispute.

Toxins Can Spread

Environmental groups describe old landfills as ticking time bombs.

The sites can hold numerous perils - migrating pockets of explosive methane gas, settling trash and debris that can cause homes and buildings to slide off foundations or sink, and chemicals from discarded paint that can taint wells and underground water supplies.

Because the use of liners for landfills wasn't required until recently, toxins buried long ago can spread, finding their way into nearby rivers, lakes and other bodies of water.

"It's a toxic mix of materials, and there's usually a lack of information about what's buried in many of these landfills," said Dwight Adams of the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club.

Adams and other environmental groups estimate there might be thousands more old landfills scattered across the state where the materials buried below are unknown.

As Fahey points out: "You don't know what's under the surface until you dig it up."

Reporter Christian M. Wade can be reached at (813) 259-7679.

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