Some clouds. Low 64F. Winds light and variable..
Some clouds. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.
Mountain Hill residents, left to right: Julie Owen, Julie Griffin, Melody Griffin and Linda Gauldin. The rise of the landfill begins behind the tree line.
Mountain Hill resident Julie Griffin took this photo of the odor machine being developed by First Piedmont to control the odor of hydrogen sulfide in the air. The machine has been in the works for nearly two years and is not yet fully operational, a delay that has frustrated residents.
Mountain Hill residents, left to right: Julie Owen, Julie Griffin, Melody Griffin and Linda Gauldin. The rise of the landfill begins behind the tree line.
Mountain Hill resident Julie Griffin took this photo of the odor machine being developed by First Piedmont to control the odor of hydrogen sulfide in the air. The machine has been in the works for nearly two years and is not yet fully operational, a delay that has frustrated residents.
The smell wasn’t immediately apparent, but as the wind changed, it drifted in — a sour, distasteful stench that Mountain Hill residents say permeates their homes and has caused headaches, coughing, nausea and difficulty breathing for those with health issues.
Last week, Julie Griffin was out weed eating the yard and the smell made her feel sick.
"It just makes you physically heave," she said.
Now organized as the Coalition For A Clean Dan River Region, the residents recently hosted a June Jamboree, paid for by a $5,000 grant from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Residents said about 100 people attended and several signed up to be a member of the group.
The goal was to raise awareness of what the residents have been living next to for years, and in some cases, decades — the First Piedmont Corporation Landfill, which has been in the Ringgold community since 1972.
Owen said their grant application described the situation as involving a low-income and minority community impacted for years by the landfill.
“I guess they felt we were a good cause,” she said.
“This is just telling our story.”
Of all the complaints the residents have about the landfill — and there are quite a few — the smell tops the list.
“It will make you sick. I started coughing and couldn’t stop,” said Owen of her experience with the odor.
In speaking with the Mountain Hill residents, it’s obvious they’re angry, frustrated and scared.
The landfill itself is up close and personal, resembling an improbable bald mountain that rises sharply behind a row of houses and a church that will not hold events outside due to the smell. The landfill is literally in in their backyards.
Owen throws down a challenge to First Piedmont, “Clean up your stink.”
The landfill is permitted for industrial and commercial waste and not residential waste, such as rotting food and garbage, which most folks associate with bad smells. Industrial and commercial waste includes construction, demolition and debris waste, industrial sludges and ash, according to Virginia Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson Anissa Rafeh.
It is permitted to receive a maximum of 6,000 tons a day.
DEQ began receiving complaints about the odor in 2018, according to documents obtained by the Star-Tribune and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.
First Piedmont Corporation Chief Operating Officer Nick Setliff said the company has determined that the smell is coming from gypsum board that the landfill took in more than 10 years ago.
Once First Piedmont realized what the gypsum was creating — hydrogen sulfide gas— the landfill stopped accepting the material, he said.
Hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs and is detectable at minute levels. Exposure to the gas can cause irritation to eyes and the respiratory system, as well as headaches, weakness, stomach upset, insomnia, apnea, coma and convulsions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because of the odor complaints, DEQ began working with First Piedmont to devise an odor remediation plan and it was submitted in April 2019.
To address the smell, First Piedmont installed an odor machine in October 2020, but it still isn’t fully operational. First Piedmont Founder and Chairman Ben Davenport said he realizes the residents are frustrated, but the machine represents new technology.
The company has finally found out how to make the equipment work and it is in the final stages of putting a catchment system around an old part of the landfill where the gases are produced and to activate this new piece of equipment, said Davenport.
Setliff describes the machine as a pilot program, a “science project,” that, when it is able to run 24/7, will take the level of hydrogen sulfide gas emanating from the landfill to a negative pressure and thus the company will be better able to control the smell going forward. The machine works by converting the hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur that is outputted as methane, which can be burned off with a flare, said Setliff.
“It’s been a work in progress. Hopefully we’re not at the end of the road,” sad Davenport.
The machine has been running intermittently the past two years, but the goal is to be able to run it while unattended and achieve negative pressure, said Setliff.
Setliff estimated that it would take four to five months of continuous operation to achieve negative pressure — the point where the smell can be controlled.
A large volume of gas has built up over the past 10 years, he said.
The machine is expected to be fully operational by the end of the summer, said Sutliff.
The residents’ objections to the landfill have ebbed and flowed as it has been a fixture in the community for 50 years.
Owen said that when the landfill first went in, residents “would pack a church” in protest. She said that more than a decade ago, the company cut down trees so it could expand and removed the vegetation that blocked the smell and sight of it.
In 2018, a former resident, Will Gunnell, wrote to DEQ stating his family moved because of the smell, and that it had been a problem for at least the past four years before that.
“The landfill has existed for many years in our neighborhood without issue, but since they opened this latest cell the stench that has come from the landfill has infiltrated the air, our homes, our churches and business (es) surrounding it depending on which way the wind blows,” wrote Gunnell.
"Our family moved because of the smell. Our church, however, does not have that option and our congregation is suffering during every service because of the lack of odor control. It gets inside the building and we can no longer hold events outside. It makes our eyes and nose burn, irritates our throats, and make us feel nauseous,” wrote Gunnell.
Owen said that what recently reignited the community’s collective ire was a special use permit granted in 2020 that allowed the company to build an office facility, as well as a rezoning request to bring a piece of the property up to code.
“Enough is enough. They want to turn our neighborhood into an industrial zone. We’re going to push back,” said Owen.
Formerly working through a Facebook page called Save our Rural Community, the new, formalized group, Coalition for a Clean Dan River Region, is now a chapter of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League of Roanoke.
Mark Barker with the BREDL said that beyond the odor and other complaints, such as debris in the road, heavy truck traffic and fears about water and air pollution, is the sense that the community is not being taken seriously be DEQ , the company and local officials.
“You need to put yourself in their shoes. I wouldn’t want to live by that and smell that,” said Barker.
When First Piedmont applied for the rezoning and special use permit, the Mountain Hill residents attended the meetings and voiced their concerns. Since those complaints did not directly pertain to the zoning, county officials hosted an information session in an attempt to alleviate the community’s concerns.
That meeting included Dr. Buck Cox, who invented the odor machine now being used by First Piedmont, as well as officials from VDOT, DEQ and the Virginia Department of Health.
The concerns remain, however, as well as the odor.
“We just get tired of telling them,” said Griffin of the community’s complaints to DEQ about the smell.
In December 2020, DEQ sent a warning letter to First Piedmont about the company failing to notify the agency about odor complaints. The odor remediation plan states that facility staff will notify DEQ within 24 hours of receiving an odor complaint, according to the letter.
When DEQ did receive complaints, agency employees made trips out to the area on odor monitoring missions, according to emails obtained by BREL through a FOIA request.
Of the three records of odor monitoring trips to the Mountain Hill area in 2018 and 2019, an odor was detected, although on two occasions it was described as “faint.” The third described it as consistent with a landfill odor.
In a June 2021 story about the landfill in the Star-Tribune, former Dan River Supervisor Joe Davis said the county had no regulatory authority to regulate the problem. Davis has since been replaced by Tim Chesher. Chesher did not respond to requests for comment about the landfill by press time.
Setiff said First Piedmont is not required to test the air quality and that the levels of pollutants are negligible other than the hydrogen sulfide, but that has a low threshold for detection and it doesn’t take much to smell its presence. Setliff said he is not personally concerned with the air quality.
Barker said testing for pollutants in the air could be tricky, as it would likely require different monitors for different chemicals, along with testing downwind from the landfill and then upwind and comparing the results. Again, cost depends on what is being tested, he said.
While the EPA has air quality thresholds for individual chemicals, regulations do not look at how combinations of chemicals behave and what happens when they mix in the air, said Barker.
Some air emissions may meet the regulations, but if someone is living there and breathing it all the time, well, “would you want to breath that?” he asked.
Owen said the community’s definition of “hazardous” differs from that of state and federal agencies. To them, it is far broader and represents any chemical that could have been dumped in the landfill and bring potential harm to their community.
When asked if they have considered moving, the Mountain Hill residents are adamant that they want to stay. Many have been there for generations. Jerry Martin, 75, is Owen’s father and has lived in the community his entire life.
“This is my home, said Melody Griffin, whose house is next to the church and the landfill is right beyond her backyard.
“We can’t pick up and move. The people were here first,” said Owen.
Setliff said the First Piedmont landfill has about another 18 years before it reaches capacity. He said the side of the cell facing the church is finished, but the company continues to fill the cell on the other side, hence the sight of trucks along its ridge. He did not provide a timeline for closing that side of the cell.
Setliff said the active portion of that cell will continue to move north and northeast of that area — away from the side that faces the church — and no other neighborhoods will be that close.
The company plans to cap off the remainder of the cell behind the church in about 18 months.
The residents were recently encouraged by a landfill in Bristol will likely be be shut down due to concerns from residents about the odor. It differs from the First Piedmont landfill as it takes municipal waste and is owned by the City of Bristol. Because the landfill is located near the Virginia-Tennessee line and odor knows no boundaries, the City of Bristol, Tenn. filed a federal lawsuit over the issue, according to news reports.
The controversy spurred an expert panel report convened by DEQ in conjunction with the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and the results were released in April.
The panel outlined a series of actions that the city could take to mitigate the existing odor and also considered options for closing the landfill early.
As a result, the mayor of Bristol announced the landfill would cease accepting waste, according to news reports.
Barker, however, wonders why a study, similar to that done for the Bristol landfill, cannot be done in Ringgold.
Returning to the perception held by Mountain Hill residents that they feel ignored and dismissed by state and local officials, Barker wants to know why Bristol residents are any more important than those in Ringgold?
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