The Roanoke Times

Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Bill Hodges, chairman of the Kim-Stan Advisory Committee, details the site of the former landfill in Alleghany County. He has more confidence now than ever that officials are remedying the site.

Thousands of gallons of leachate flow through Kim-Stan daily, and a drainage system is being installed to help remove it.

SELMA -- The rising stretch of land along Virginia 696 where the Kim-Stan Landfill lies against the Rich Patch Mountains used to be a toxic thorn in this rural community's side.

But one day soon, some who know all the details about one of the most polluted landfills in the country hope it could rest underneath a recreational park or a playground -- things that typically draw a community together.

Contractors hired by the federal Environmental Protection Agency are working this summer to upgrade the landfill's groundwater drainage system to remove leachate from the site. Over the next several months, workers will install a waterproof cap over the landfill to prevent further rainfall from mixing with the landfill's underground contaminants. Once that's done, soil and vegetation will cover the site and the visible remains of Kim-Stan will disappear.

It's the final stage of a plan to close down the infamous landfill in Alleghany County. The cleanup effort is being paid for with $10 million in federal funds that were allocated to the landfill last year -- added to $2.5 million spent since 2004 alone.

Alicia Gordon, who lives about a mile from the site, is one of many residents who spent 19 years trying to get state and federal authorities to do something about Kim-Stan.

"I'm really pleased that the site is coming to closure," she said.

Kim-Stan operated as a sanitary and industrial landfill from 1972 until 1990. For much of its life, the privately owned landfill took in about 40 tons a day of county trash. But starting in 1988, nearly 2,000 tons of waste each day from New York and other northern metropolitan areas was being trucked into the landfill, according to EPA reports. How much of it was unregulated is unknown -- but authorities cited the private partnership that ran the landfill for allowing some trucks to dump there without proper authorization.

The site was closed in 1990 under court order for violating environmental regulations.

Bill Hodges serves as the chairman of the Kim-Stan Advisory Committee, created in 1994 to persuade state and federal authorities to take action against the landfill. At the time, it was estimated that more than 30,000 gallons of leachate per day were flowing from the landfill into a nearby tributary of the James River.

"We met monthly, or almost monthly, for 13 or 14 years," said Hodges, who looked out over the landfill Thursday, the smell of rotting garbage still present in the wind. "I think our efforts brought us to where we are now. I don't think it would have happened without the Kim-Stan Advisory Committee."

In 1999, the 24-acre landfill was placed on the EPA's National Superfund Priorities List for cleanup assistance.

Among the estimated 80-foot thickness of waste buried at the site are a number of toxins: waste oils contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls; aluminum sludges containing mercury; asbestos; and medical waste.

Test pit data and information collected by area residents indicated the waste came from hospitals, light industrial plants, manufacturing plants, automobile repair shops and dry cleaners.

This summer, storage tanks that were used to hold leachate at the landfill were dug up, dismantled and removed.

In an interview by e-mail, Anthony Iacobone, a remedial project manager with the EPA's Office of Superfund Site Remediation, said the landfill never had a liner under the site. The tanks were used to try to control the amount of leachate that left the site.

"They have not been used in many years and were empty when they were dug up," he said.

A drainage system is being installed now to help remove thousands of gallons of leachate that flow through the site daily. A system is already in place to pump the leachate about two miles away to be treated at the Low Moor Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Gary Hepler, deputy director of public works for Alleghany County, said the treatment plant was upgraded using federal funds about two years ago to accept the leachate.

He said the leachate is treated like normal sewage, but that the plant conducts annual tests to determine if the presence of hazardous chemicals or heavy metals exceed acceptable federal levels.

"If anything shows up then we take steps. But we've always been under the limit," Helper said.

Work on installing a waterproof cap, followed by about 2 feet of soil and various vegetation, is due to be completed no later than September 2009.

"There have been many sites in recent years that have been returned to the community for reuse as parks, wildlife habitats or recreational facilities," Iacobone said.

Groundwater at the site will be monitored quarterly for at least three years until tests show there are no environmental hazards present, he said.

Hodges, 71, a farmer, retired school principal and former chairman of the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors, has more confidence now than ever before that the EPA is taking care of the situation.

"It's quieter days now," he said. "I think the feeling is we're going in the right direction, and the problem will be resolved."