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Landfill Design Flawed, Consultant Says

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By STEVE ANDREWS

sandrews@wfla.com

Published: February 6, 2009

The design of a proposed 90-acre landfill near Dade City violates state regulations and has flaws so serious that a redesign may be necessary to protect the environment, a consultant says.

The consultant, Virginia-based civil engineer Joseph Fluet, once worked for the company that wants to build the landfill.

Angelo's Recycled Materials hired Fluet in May to review paperwork it submitted to the state in its landfill permit application. Fluet, who was never paid by Angelo's for his draft report, now works for the project's opponents.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which must approve the landfill, postponed its decision on a permit last month so that state officials could review Fluet's report. The department is expected to issue its opinion Feb. 12.

Angelo's wants to build a landfill that will initially consist of six 15-acre sections, or cells. Household garbage will stack an average 150 feet high. The landfill would sit in Dade City off the Old Lakeland Highway, a little more than a mile from the Green Swamp, a source of drinking water for much of Central Florida, including Tampa.

Landfill opponents worry that as the garbage deteriorates into liquid or leachate, it will leak into the environment, tainting the water supply.

Angelo's plans to install a double liner system to capture the leachate before it gets into the environment.

Concerns Reported In June

Fluet, who has done consulting work on landfill design across the country, said he reviewed Angelo's documentation last year and submitted a report to the company in June.

He says his concerns now are the same as they were last year.

Fluet's report points out that some leachate removal pipes will lie beneath the landfill and be subjected to enormous weight from the garbage above.

"If something happens to the pipe, there is no way to fix it," Fluet said. "I suppose you can remove the entire landfill."

Fluet said the current design of the leachate removal system is complex, difficult to build and violates Department of Environmental Protection regulations because some of the system's pipes sit under the water table at the site. Fluet contends landfill rules in the Florida Administrative Code prohibit putting landfill waste beneath the water table.

Angelo's project manager John Arnold says there is no rule violation and DEP agrees.

"This exact system is successfully in use at several facilities in Florida," Arnold said.

If there is a leak or break, Angelo's would find it, he said.

"What we would do is we would go in and figure out what was wrong," Arnold said. "Then remediate it all the way from ultimately digging up the 15-acre cell if that's what the engineers or regulators deemed necessary."

Fluet Consulted For Opponent

Arnold said his company did not pay Fluet for his consultant work. Once Angelo's got a copy of Fluet's draft report, the two disagreed on the scope of work and his fees.

"We were talking to him and coming to terms and we found out he was working for Bill Blanchard," Arnold said.

Blanchard owns land near the proposed landfill site. He has hired geologists to study Angelo's geology work at the site and lobbyists to make sure DEP hears his side of the argument. He has also paid Fluet for his engineering expertise.

Blanchard's geologist has said that the three ancient sinkholes that the landfill would sit on are dormant now, but the possibility exists that they could become active.

In January, Fluet prepared a report for Blanchard's attorneys. He said it contained similar concerns that he expressed to Angelo's last year. That report was presented to DEP in a meeting between Blanchard and top administrators in Tallahassee.

Fluet's January report also says Angelo's design for the landfill does not adequately address potential sinkholes, and that parts of the leachate collection and removal system are too close to the water table, a violation of Florida regulations.

"He is incorrect," Arnold said. "No such rule exists with FDEP."

Pam Vazquez, spokeswoman for DEP's Tampa office, said staff found no rules violations either.

"If they have made that determination, there's not much to say other than we disagree," Fluet said.

Fluet chaired a technical advisory task force for DEP from 1989 to '94 that wrote the last major revisions of landfill rules for Florida's Administrative Code.

"I helped write these regs and I know the intent when I wrote them," Fluet said.

News Channel 8 reporter Steve Andrews can be reached at (813) 221-5779.

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