Articles

Budget Drains Landfill Cleanup

Stacy Shelton, AJC Staff
February 22, 2004

One in every six Georgians lives within two miles of a leaking landfill that is contaminating the groundwater around it. Yet the governor and state lawmakers attempting to balance the state's teetering budget are redirecting $9 million collected specifically to clean up such toxic messes.

More than halfway through the General Assembly session, the proposed $16 billion budget would shift user fees collected for the cleanups to the general fund.

"The governor's priorities are children and jobs," said Loretta Lepore, spokeswoman for Gov. Sonny Perdue. "And given the tight financial situation we're working with, I don't think he's going to modify anything that was proposed."

It's up to state lawmakers to determine whether scarce dollars can be returned to the cleanup fund, she said.

Most of the 153 leaking landfills are listed on the state's hazardous site inventory, a compilation of Georgia's dirtiest tracts of land. A few of them still take garbage.

And 124 of the state's landfills have caused enough pollution to violate federal safe drinking water standards.

Landfill neighbors most at risk are those who draw drinking water from wells. One of the most dangerous substances they could consume is vinyl chloride, a potent toxin that causes cancer. It's used to make a variety of plastics, including furniture, pipes and wire coatings, but also can be created when other substances break down.

State-required monitoring wells around landfills usually detect contamination before enough of it gets into water supplies to do harm. But about three years ago, enough vinyl chloride leached from a landfill in Peach County in Middle Georgia to force neighbors to stop drinking from wells. Officials had to supply them with bottled water until their homes could be connected to a municipal water system.

The problem could have been more serious had state-paid geologists not been checking groundwater near the site regularly. Some of the money Perdue and legislators are redirecting from the state Hazardous Waste Trust Fund has gone toward the geologists' salaries.

Money in the trust fund mostly comes from a 65-cents-a-ton fee paid by anyone dumping garbage at a landfill. When the fee was increased in 2002 to beef up the fund, public and private landfill operators backed the plan. They now say state officials have gone back on their promise to use the money for environmental cleanups.

Besides contributing to salaries, the trust fund is used to reimburse cities and counties for work they've done to fix environmental messes Ñ most caused by landfills. By redirecting the money, the governor and lawmakers have left about 50 counties and cities holding the bill.

The raid has left just $3.6 million in the fund, although state Environmental Protection Division officials say $5.2 million is needed to continue cleanups already in progress. With the fund so low, EPD has stopped accepting local governments' requests for money. If local governments have to absorb the full cost of cleaning up environmental messes Ñ which can surpass $2 million when groundwater is contaminated Ñ they are likely to delay cleanups, regulators warn.

And the problems are likely to multiply as landfills age. Georgia has 518 landfills, the vast majority built before 1988 when the state started phasing in federal requirements for plastic and clay liners at landfills that take household waste. The liners help prevent toxins from seeping into groundwater.

Yet even landfills with liners can leak. According to EPD data analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, nine of the state's 58 lined landfills are leaching toxins into soil and groundwater.

EPD Director Carol Couch said "there's a direct public health consequence" to the trust fund raid.

Still, nobody at the Capitol has come forward with a plan to restore the fund.

To do that, legislators would have to shift money in a proposed budget that already is slashing spending by $800 million, in part by shedding more than 1,000 state jobs. The Hazardous Waste Trust Fund already is down about $9 million because of money raided for the current budget. If it's raided for the new budget, which starts July 1, the cumulative loss will be $18 million.

The Hazardous Waste Trust Fund wasn't the only fund hijacked. The governor's proposed budget wipes out the Solid Waste Trust Fund, used to pay for county litter programs and recycling centers and to clean up illegal dumps. About $6.1 million for that fund is raised annually, mostly through a $1 fee on every old tire disposed of at a gas station or tire store.

Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta), secretary of the House Appropriations Committee, said there could be long-term effects from redirecting the funds.

"I'm worried that we open up the state to great liability," he said. "It will turn back the clock on the progress we've been making."

[AJC] Staff writer Maurice Tamman contributed analysis for this article. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.