r/ChesterfieldPolitics

A “geyser” of leachate, black goo-like waste, elevated temperatures and troubling ammonia levels at the defunct Shoosmith Landfill all came into the public eye at Wednesday’s Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors meeting.

“It’s causing all sorts of problems,” said Mike Rolband, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, who led the agency’s presentation to the board. “This is a significant risk.”

With the landfill now part of a bankruptcy proceeding under the stewardship of trustee Lynn Tavenner, cleanup efforts continue through a “truck and haul” system, which Rolband pointed out is prohibitively expensive. DEQ officials peg the cleanup costs at $173 million total and believe it will take 30 years to complete.

But the board continuously returned to the question of where the money will come from.

Rolband told the board that funds used for the cleanup are slated to be exhausted this fall. The operators posted a $20 million bond with the state three years ago, and the General Assembly allocated more than $10 million in the latest budget which will go toward cleanup.

Read more here.

The folks at Chesterfield Citizens for Responsible Government (CCRG) have posted some information on their website about Shoosmith Landfill that may be of interest. There's a report on how things got to this point, who the players are, and quotes from the bankruptcy trustee. There are pictures of the conditions at Shoosmith, taken from DEQ documents, that show some of their inspection violations. There's information on Elevated Temperature Landfills, and how coal ash plays a role in raising landfill temperatures which, in turn, generates greater quantities of leachate. In case you didn't know, coal ash was used to build a lot of Shoosmith berms or cells - the pits where trash gets dumped. Yep, coal ash! AKA, fly ash. The surprising part is using coal ash like that wasn't illegal, and still isn't! In spite of known contamination by heavy metals like cadmium and other cancer-causing things. So now we have to wonder if any of those contaminants have leached out beyond the Shoosmith boundaries, into other properties or into Swift Creek or Piney Branch Creek. There's some documents that explain a lot about coal ash, and pictures of it being used at Shoosmith. Anyway, it's way too much to post here, but you can see it on the CCRG website at https://ccrg-va.org/blog/ .

r/ChesterfieldPolitics

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Shoosmith Information