What’s driving Russell County to consider a landfill that nobody wants

A slew of increased costs resulting from inflation, mandated teacher salary increases, rising regional jail costs and big hikes in the cost of waste disposal will significantly strain Russell County’s budget over the next three years, according to County Administrator Lonzo Lester.

These additional expenses are one reason the county is considering an unpopular private landfill proposal, Lester said during a board of supervisors public hearing Friday night on the project. The meeting drew about 400 people and a heavy law enforcement presence to the county government center.

For months, county residents have been urging board members to reject the private landfill project, saying it would result in environmental damage, impact the health of residents and create odor, noise and traffic.

But county officials had been mostly silent until Friday, when they gave a lengthy presentation on the history of the project, which started in June 2022, and its legal and financial implications.

Russell County Reclamation partner John Matney wants to open a landfill on the site of the former Moss No. 3 coal prep plant in the Carbo area of the county. The company owns about 1,250 acres there, and the landfill would be developed on about 30 acres at the center of the site.

Lester said the county considers the landfill an economic development project that could bring in needed revenue and jobs.

He said the county faces an additional $1.3 million in contractual and mandated increases in the next one to three years, including $375,000 for increased foster care costs, $225,000 for labor costs and the rising number of inmates at the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail and $520,000 in solid waste disposal costs.

Board Vice Chairman David Eaton said he thinks that the city of Bristol has “caused an actual nightmare with the inflated cost of garbage, and that’s going to be something that this board is going to have to deal with.”

Bristol’s landfill once accepted waste from across the region, but it stopped taking trash in September 2022 as it worked to remedy a serious odor issue that drew thousands of complaints from residents, with many claiming it caused health issues.

The problems began more than three years ago, and the city estimates it will cost about $60 million to fix. The odors, which smelled like rotting garbage combined with a sour, chemical stench, have improved significantly in recent months, but City Manager Randy Eads said last week that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Like Russell County, Bristol now trucks its waste to a facility in Blountville, Tennessee.

Eads did not respond to a request for comment.

Lester said Waste Management in Blountville is now “the only game in town.” The county has a three-year contract that expires in 2026, but it would have to be renegotiated and that amount would reflect inflationary increases as well as hikes in fuel and environmental costs that would likely cost the county an additional half a million dollars, he said.

If the county had a private landfill, not only would it collect a host fee, the amount of which is still being negotiated, but it would save money on transportation and transfer station costs, Lester said. The county also pays the waste disposal bill for its four towns, he added.

The county would also collect taxes on real estate, machines and tools, and there would be a tax on the landfill’s liner. All of that could mean no new taxes for county residents, he said, though several in the audience replied that they’d rather pay higher taxes than have a landfill.

The county administrator also presented several scenarios of what could happen if the county doesn’t approve the host agreement and move forward with the project. One of those was that RCR could sue the county. 

But several from the audience and a speaker at the podium seemed unimpressed, saying anyone can sue anyone these days.

Board Chairman Steve Breeding pointed out that the county is not in a financial position to build its own landfill, which he said would likely cost $12 million to $15 million.

Lester responded that it would take all of $10 million just to get through the process of trying to obtain a waste permit from the state.

Since the amount of the host fee that the county would collect is not known, the county administrator used a hypothetical amount of $1 per ton of trash to show what the landfill could mean to the county economically.

In its first year, the fee and the savings would mean $750,000 to the county, he said. Over the nearly 40-year life of the landfill, it would mean $205 million in host fees and $20 million in savings, for a total of $225 million, according to Lester.

“That’s very impactful,” he said. “It’s hard to not acknowledge it as an industrial-worthy economic development project.”

Without the landfill, he said the county would be left with 118 million tons of waste coal on that site that dates to the late 1950s, when the coal plant opened. But several said that responsibility should lie with the landfill owner instead of the county.

Matney’s Nova Co. has filed a notice that it intends to submit a solid waste permit application to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to establish the landfill. Matney has said the permit application process is long and arduous and will likely take two to five years to complete.

That permit requires a host agreement that spells out all the details between the company and the county. Breeding said county leaders have been working on the host agreement for some time and thought they were close to finalizing it, but board members asked for so many new items and changes Friday night that it will take more time.

Jeff Southard, an attorney with Gentry Locke who was hired to represent the county in the landfill negotiations, said under the host agreement, the county would have a guaranteed disposal capacity for its own solid waste as well as a reduced rate.

The host agreement would also provide a landfill liaison, who would monitor the development, construction and operation of the landfill, and the position would be paid for by the landfill owner, he said.

Currently, the property is considered an industrial site under the county’s solid waste ordinance; it would need to be reclassified as a landfill in order for the project to move forward, Southard said.

Some questioned whether this should have been done before the county proceeded with trying to work out the host agreement.

Concerns about health, real estate values

When it was time for residents to speak, few in the crowd seemed swayed by the fiscal arguments in favor of the landfill. Many of the same people repeated what they said during an informational meeting Matney held on Jan. 29 that drew around 300 people.

They said they are worried that the landfill would hurt the health of residents, as well as nearby land and water sources. They’re concerned about wildlife and the effect that a landfill could have on property values.

Denise Blevins, who said she’s been a Realtor for 29 years, asked county officials how they think real estate values would be affected by a landfill. She didn’t get an answer and eventually, the same question was posed to her by a county official.

Blevins said that in her experience, when buyers are told there is a landfill close to a property they are interested in, they want nothing to do with it.

James Gibbs, the international vice president of the United Mine Workers of America, and a number of others wearing UMWA hats and camouflage T-shirts turned out for the meeting. Last week, the union released two statements saying it opposes the landfill.

Gibbs repeated what the union said: that the Moss No. 3 mine was the site of one of the most important demonstrations in the Pittston Coal strike in 1989-90.

“I’ll tell you up front, this place is a historic site,” Gibbs said, adding that putting trash on top of it would erase labor history.

“This county stood with us [during the strike]. And we will stand with you,” he said to applause.

Tim Cywinski, communications manager for the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, said he was asked to speak about the consequences of a landfill.

“Let’s just get down to brass tacks,” he said. “Every single landfill smells, it doesn’t matter what kind of deodorizer you put on it, it doesn’t matter what kind of tools you put in. They smell, and that smell is not just bad for the community. It’s a health hazard because it contains chemicals that are toxic and the people who get sick the most are children. Full stop.”

Cywinski added that everything that smells in a landfill is also flammable, and every year in this country, landfills account for 10,000 uncontrolled fires.

Eventually, all landfills leak, he said.

“Let’s just call this what it is,” he said. “You can put bells and whistles on it, but pollution is pollution no matter what you call it. It’s not an industrial site, it’s a pollution site.”