Countywide landfill’s liquid waste affects Alliance sewage plant
BY Robert Wang
The Canton Repository
LEXINGTON TWP - Countywide landfill trucked nearly 20 million gallons of liquid waste last year to the Alliance wastewater treatment plant, overwhelming the plant’s ability to treat it.
As a result, Alliance discharged ammonia, organic waste and fecal bacteria into Beech Creek — and thus the Mahoning River and Berlin Reservoir — at levels that reached as much as three times state limits. And a million gallons of the liquid waste continues to be stored on the plant’s property.
Though the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ordered Alliance to stop taking the waste in December, the agency does not believe environmental damage was done to the creek, river or reservoir.
The plant’s superintendent, Joe Amabeli, said his facility has treated Countywide Recycling and Disposal Facility’s leachate — the liquid that results when water percolates through landfill waste — since 1992.
But the plant did not experience significant problems with that liquid until last year, when the amount of leachate from the Pike Township landfill soared from 6.2 million gallons in 2005 to nearly 20 million gallons.
SOLVING ONE PROBLEM, CREATING ANOTHER
Countywide had been recirculating much of its waste liquid through the landfill since the mid-1990s. But early last year, southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas county residents started complaining of a landfill stench, an odor that Countywide blames on the mix of the leachate with solid aluminum waste.
So Countywide stopped recirculating and the amount of leachate going to Alliance more than tripled.
Starting in May, Amabeli said Countywide’s leachate had such high levels of ammonia and organic matter that his plant at times couldn’t properly treat it and reduce the levels to legal limits. During several incidents from May to October, his plant’s discharges into the waterways exceeded limits for ammonia, the organic matter and other bacteria.
Amabeli said the ammonia and organic matter fed the sewage treatment bacteria, causing them to multiply too rapidly. Because young bacteria didn’t settle well in the sewage system, the plant on at least three occasions discharged too much dead and living bacteria into the creek. The ammonia also in July and August hindered the effectiveness of chlorine to kill fecal coliform bacteria, which comes from feces and can make people sick.
“The waste was so strong, we couldn’t treat it with the amount of equipment we had,” said Amabeli.
The EPA said the plant committed at least 28 environmental violations tied to the leachate. Amabeli said his plant on Rockhill Avenue NE normally has no more than one or two violations a year.
In an e-mail on Dec. 14, EPA environmental engineer Dean Stoll, who oversees the plant, called it “significant noncompliance.” He said if the ammonia and other materials reach certain levels, they can kill fish or make people sick.
That’s when the EPA ordered Alliance to stop taking the leachate. To help give the plant’s treatment bacteria time to recover, Alliance also stopped taking the liquid waste from American Landfill in Sandy Township.
OFFICIALS: NO ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
Amabeli stressed that he does not believe the violations in 2006 jeopardized the environment, public health or normal operations at the plant.
He said most people would not notice the concentrations.
And because the plant has tried to address the situation, Stoll said, the EPA did not fine or punish the city.
“It’s serious, but they’ve corrected the problem,” he said.
GOOD CUSTOMER
Amabeli said he could have lived without the headaches.
“We reached the point where we needed to sever that, get our plant back in control,” Amabeli said. “It wasn’t Countywide’s fault ... we had the violations; ... it’s our fault.
“After the first violation, when we learned we were getting high-strength waste, we could have cut them off.”
Countywide General Manager Tim Vandersall said the aluminum waste reaction, blamed for high temperatures and rapid waste decomposition at Countywide, changed the characteristics of the leachate and increased the amount generated.
At the peak, Amabeli said, five JMW trucks each carried 5,000 gallons five times a day roughly 30 miles from Countywide to Alliance. As the leachate poured into holding tanks, it generated the same stench experienced by residents around the landfill. In addition, when the leachate tank was mixed, foam would appear and blow around the plant.
DISTURBING TEST RESULTS
Alliance first noticed a problem with the leachate in May, when test results for high ammonia came back from the lab.
“The first week, we thought it was a burp. The second week, we thought we have a problem,” Amabeli said.
After Alliance began testing trucks and determined Countywide’s waste was the problem, it modified how it treated it, but had only temporary success.
To increase the plant’s ability to treat the leachate, Countywide paid more than $54,000 to install and equip a third treatment tank at the plant and agreed to pay for the electricity to pump more oxygen into the waste. The tank was installed in mid-October.
It appeared to relieve the problem. Amabeli and Alliance Safety/Service Director John B. Blaser wrote the EPA in early December that Alliance was willing to continue to treat the leachate though “we cannot guarantee that we will not have more violations.”
Amabeli said he was reluctant to abandon Countywide because it had been a loyal customer (the landfill paid Alliance nearly $279,000 in disposal costs in 2006), and he worried about where else the landfill could dispose of the leachate if Alliance cut it off.
“We feel the environmental impact caused by our violations is much less severe than the damage Countywide could cause by not finding anyone capable of treating their leachate,” said Alliance’s December letter to the EPA.
Still, Amabeli says now, “I would have lived a lot better if we didn’t take this leachate.”
After Alliance cut off Countywide, it still had 2 million gallons of leachate in a storage tank, Amabeli said. Since then, it has treated half of the waste, taking care to dispose of it slowly enough to avoid overwhelming the treatment system. Amabeli expects to dispose of the rest within a month.
Alliance has resumed taking in some of Countywide’s leachate, though away from troubled areas of the landfill. The rest of Countywide’s leachate is going to Cincinnati, Vickery, Barberton and Bedford Heights, according to the EPA.
POTENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
COUNTYWIDE RECYCLING AND DISPOSAL FACILITY LEACHATE ACCEPTED BY ALLIANCE WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT (IN GALLONS):
2000: 1,217,600
2001: 1,984,000
2002: 34,000
2003: 167,001
2004: 449,150
2005: 6,236,632
2006: 19,919,519
Source: Alliance wastewater treatment plant
COUNTYWIDE LANDFILL TREATMENT FEES PAID TO ALLIANCE
2000: $7,222
2001: $39,815
2002: $765
2003: $4,593
2004: $12,352
2005: $107,958
2006: $278,994
Source: Alliance wastewater treatment plant
SAMPLE OF DISCHARGE VIOLATIONS
Ammonia
The Canton Repository
LEXINGTON TWP - Countywide landfill trucked nearly 20 million gallons of liquid waste last year to the Alliance wastewater treatment plant, overwhelming the plant’s ability to treat it.
As a result, Alliance discharged ammonia, organic waste and fecal bacteria into Beech Creek — and thus the Mahoning River and Berlin Reservoir — at levels that reached as much as three times state limits. And a million gallons of the liquid waste continues to be stored on the plant’s property.
Though the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ordered Alliance to stop taking the waste in December, the agency does not believe environmental damage was done to the creek, river or reservoir.
The plant’s superintendent, Joe Amabeli, said his facility has treated Countywide Recycling and Disposal Facility’s leachate — the liquid that results when water percolates through landfill waste — since 1992.
But the plant did not experience significant problems with that liquid until last year, when the amount of leachate from the Pike Township landfill soared from 6.2 million gallons in 2005 to nearly 20 million gallons.
SOLVING ONE PROBLEM, CREATING ANOTHER
Countywide had been recirculating much of its waste liquid through the landfill since the mid-1990s. But early last year, southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas county residents started complaining of a landfill stench, an odor that Countywide blames on the mix of the leachate with solid aluminum waste.
So Countywide stopped recirculating and the amount of leachate going to Alliance more than tripled.
Starting in May, Amabeli said Countywide’s leachate had such high levels of ammonia and organic matter that his plant at times couldn’t properly treat it and reduce the levels to legal limits. During several incidents from May to October, his plant’s discharges into the waterways exceeded limits for ammonia, the organic matter and other bacteria.
Amabeli said the ammonia and organic matter fed the sewage treatment bacteria, causing them to multiply too rapidly. Because young bacteria didn’t settle well in the sewage system, the plant on at least three occasions discharged too much dead and living bacteria into the creek. The ammonia also in July and August hindered the effectiveness of chlorine to kill fecal coliform bacteria, which comes from feces and can make people sick.
“The waste was so strong, we couldn’t treat it with the amount of equipment we had,” said Amabeli.
The EPA said the plant committed at least 28 environmental violations tied to the leachate. Amabeli said his plant on Rockhill Avenue NE normally has no more than one or two violations a year.
In an e-mail on Dec. 14, EPA environmental engineer Dean Stoll, who oversees the plant, called it “significant noncompliance.” He said if the ammonia and other materials reach certain levels, they can kill fish or make people sick.
That’s when the EPA ordered Alliance to stop taking the leachate. To help give the plant’s treatment bacteria time to recover, Alliance also stopped taking the liquid waste from American Landfill in Sandy Township.
OFFICIALS: NO ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
Amabeli stressed that he does not believe the violations in 2006 jeopardized the environment, public health or normal operations at the plant.
He said most people would not notice the concentrations.
And because the plant has tried to address the situation, Stoll said, the EPA did not fine or punish the city.
“It’s serious, but they’ve corrected the problem,” he said.
GOOD CUSTOMER
Amabeli said he could have lived without the headaches.
“We reached the point where we needed to sever that, get our plant back in control,” Amabeli said. “It wasn’t Countywide’s fault ... we had the violations; ... it’s our fault.
“After the first violation, when we learned we were getting high-strength waste, we could have cut them off.”
Countywide General Manager Tim Vandersall said the aluminum waste reaction, blamed for high temperatures and rapid waste decomposition at Countywide, changed the characteristics of the leachate and increased the amount generated.
At the peak, Amabeli said, five JMW trucks each carried 5,000 gallons five times a day roughly 30 miles from Countywide to Alliance. As the leachate poured into holding tanks, it generated the same stench experienced by residents around the landfill. In addition, when the leachate tank was mixed, foam would appear and blow around the plant.
DISTURBING TEST RESULTS
Alliance first noticed a problem with the leachate in May, when test results for high ammonia came back from the lab.
“The first week, we thought it was a burp. The second week, we thought we have a problem,” Amabeli said.
After Alliance began testing trucks and determined Countywide’s waste was the problem, it modified how it treated it, but had only temporary success.
To increase the plant’s ability to treat the leachate, Countywide paid more than $54,000 to install and equip a third treatment tank at the plant and agreed to pay for the electricity to pump more oxygen into the waste. The tank was installed in mid-October.
It appeared to relieve the problem. Amabeli and Alliance Safety/Service Director John B. Blaser wrote the EPA in early December that Alliance was willing to continue to treat the leachate though “we cannot guarantee that we will not have more violations.”
Amabeli said he was reluctant to abandon Countywide because it had been a loyal customer (the landfill paid Alliance nearly $279,000 in disposal costs in 2006), and he worried about where else the landfill could dispose of the leachate if Alliance cut it off.
“We feel the environmental impact caused by our violations is much less severe than the damage Countywide could cause by not finding anyone capable of treating their leachate,” said Alliance’s December letter to the EPA.
Still, Amabeli says now, “I would have lived a lot better if we didn’t take this leachate.”
After Alliance cut off Countywide, it still had 2 million gallons of leachate in a storage tank, Amabeli said. Since then, it has treated half of the waste, taking care to dispose of it slowly enough to avoid overwhelming the treatment system. Amabeli expects to dispose of the rest within a month.
Alliance has resumed taking in some of Countywide’s leachate, though away from troubled areas of the landfill. The rest of Countywide’s leachate is going to Cincinnati, Vickery, Barberton and Bedford Heights, according to the EPA.
POTENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
- Ammonia: Toxic to fish in high enough quantities.
- Carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand (CBOD): The level at which organic matter — made up of proteins, carbohydrates and ammonia — triggers a process that consumes oxygen. The higher the oxygen demand of organic material, the more bacteria eat; they multiply and consume the oxygen in water.
- Total suspended solids: Made up of solid material, including live and dead bacteria, used in sewage treatment. It can coat the bottom of streams and cover aquatic organisms.
- Fecal coliform: Microorganisms from feces that can make people sick.
COUNTYWIDE RECYCLING AND DISPOSAL FACILITY LEACHATE ACCEPTED BY ALLIANCE WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT (IN GALLONS):
2000: 1,217,600
2001: 1,984,000
2002: 34,000
2003: 167,001
2004: 449,150
2005: 6,236,632
2006: 19,919,519
Source: Alliance wastewater treatment plant
COUNTYWIDE LANDFILL TREATMENT FEES PAID TO ALLIANCE
2000: $7,222
2001: $39,815
2002: $765
2003: $4,593
2004: $12,352
2005: $107,958
2006: $278,994
Source: Alliance wastewater treatment plant
SAMPLE OF DISCHARGE VIOLATIONS
Ammonia
- May week 2 (concentration): 3.14 milligrams per liter
- May week 4 (concentration): 9.34 milligrams per liter
- State weekly limit (concentration): 3 milligrams per liter
- May total (quantity): 90.21 kilograms per day
- State monthly limit (quantity): 56.8 kilograms per day
- June week 3 (concentration): 94.75 milligrams per liter
- State weekly limit (concentration): 30 milligrams per liter
- June (quantity): 593.9 kilograms per day
- State monthly limit (quantity): 568 kilograms per day
- July: 1,351.65 counts per 100 milliliters
- State monthly limit: 1,000 counts per 100 milliliters
- September week 3 (concentration): 57.3 milligrams per liter
- State weekly limit (concentration): 15 milligrams per liter
- September week 3 (quantity): 1,289 kilograms per day
- State weekly limit (quantity): 426 kilograms per day
- September (concentration): 17.1 milligrams per liter
- State monthly limit (concentration): 10 milligrams per liter
- October week 3 (quantity): 1,008.02 kilograms per day
- State weekly limit (quantity): 852 kilograms per day
