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Don't bury city finances with landfill demands

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 15, 2009

The state Department of Environmental Protection has good reason to want Tampa to clean up the dozens of old landfills, including some on school sites, within the city.

Old landfills can contaminate water and pose a health and safety threat. As the Tribune's Christian Wade reports, tests through the years have found unacceptable levels of methane, arsenic, cyanide and other toxic chemicals at various sites.

Still, there is no evidence anyone has suffered any harm or that the bulk of these old landfills pose a threat. Moreover, DEP's current demands would, as city attorney Chip Fletcher says, "bankrupt the city."

State regulators should throttle back. But so should city officials.

Fearful Tampa officials are pushing the Legislature to curb the DEP's landfill authority. But there is a possibility for mischief whenever lawmakers get involved with curtailing environmental laws. Special interests usually get in the act and work to undermine other public protections.

A better solution would be for DEP to work with the city on a practical - and affordable - approach. During these dire economic times, the city's limited funds must be spent carefully.

Some background: There are more than 40 former landfills in the city, most of which were shut down long before there were state regulations. In the 1980s, the city, to its credit, sought to inventory the old sites and began a modest monitoring program.

Some of the old landfills are on city land. Others are on private or even state land, though some of these parcels were used for the dumping of city material.

A few of sites have been cleaned up when redevelopment occurred on the property, but others still contain contaminated material.

Of particular concern to DEP regulators are Pizzo Elementary, Roland Park Middle School and Young Middle Magnet School. Tests there, Wade reports, have found high levels of methane and other contaminants.

Monitoring and cleaning the school sites should be a priority. But in addition, DEP also wants the city to test and remediate 18 city-owned sites. The agency is threatening the city with fines for noncompliance, though there is no evidence of a public health threat.

This is unrealistic. Bankrupting the city is not going to help the environment or the public health.

Such a scattershot strategy is not, as Fletcher says, good stewardship of city funds.

Instead, DEP should work with the city to develop a priority list for it to address. The city could then monitor and clean up sites in a systematic fashion, without incurring unreasonable costs.

The city is already spending about $200,000 to monitor the landfills. Tampa is hardly the only city to have numerous closed landfills within its borders. But most cities, unlike Tampa, have not tried to locate and identify the sites. So the city, in effect, is being punished for being proactive.

By no means should DEP ignore potential contamination. But the landfills have not been linked to any illnesses or resulted in dangerous methane pockets.

DEP is correct to want the landfills addressed. But it should not make the city go broke in the process.

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