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TO: Gayle Wilson, Director, <br />Orange County-Chapel Hill Department of Solid Waste Management <br />FR: Jim Bateson, P.G., and Jan McHargue, P.E., Joyce Engineering, Inc. <br />RE: Response to the September 21,1999 Comments by Dr. Z.J. Kabala, <br />concerning Guess Road site characterization <br />DATE: September 27,1999 <br />This memo is in response to comments by Dr. Z.J. Kabala during the September 21 public hearing on <br />C&D landfill siting. Our purpose is to clear up any confusion that those comments may have caused, so <br />that the Board can make informed decisions based on accurate information. Setting the record straight is <br />important for Orange County and the County's Department of Solid Waste Management. Over the long <br />run, inflated public perceptions of environmental risk cripple a community's , efforts to find safe, <br />equitable and affordable solutions to its waste disposal needs. <br />What perceptions were left with the audience? .One was that arsenic from construction and demolition <br />waste will contaminate large areas around such landfills.. Dr. Kabala repeated tonnage figures from a <br />Superfund site in Massachusetts where arsenic-bearing industrial waste was dumped over a period of <br />decades onto a floodplain. Comparing this disaster with a modern landfill is not relevant, <br />particularly in light of the trace levels of arsenic listed in the Environmental Protection Agency's C&D <br />Leachate Database, or contained in the mass of groundwater monitoring data for North Carolina <br />landfills. <br />A second perception was that the engineering and hydrogeologic investigations performed to date at the <br />Guess Road site were inadequate and poorly designed.. Dr. Kabala stated that the arsenic threat <br />warranted. the use of expensive multi-well pumping tests, normally required only at sites with <br />significant known groundwater contamination. Our methods .are industry standard procedures <br />required by the NC Solid Waste Management Rules. Our study design, and its pre-approval by the NC <br />Division of Waste Management, were based on the known risks of existing landfills in North Carolina, <br />and on the accumulated experience of the community of consultants, regulators, and university faculty <br />who tackle groundwater problems in this state. <br />We would be happy to discuss these issues with Dr. Kabala in regard to either of the two sites. Specific <br />comments, with our responses, are attached. We appreciate that Dr. Kabala's arguments for caution in <br />siting a landfill in the Little River watershed were made in the spirit of public service. However, <br />influencing public perception through sensationalism, by using information from sites which are not <br />comparable to C&D landfills, is a disservice to the community. We hope that impressions :left by his <br />words -will not prevent reasoned .discussion about how best to meet Orange County's solid waste <br />challenges. <br />Response to Comments of Dr. Z.J. Kabala l Joyce Engineering, Inc <br />C&D Landfill Siting September 27, 1999 <br />Orange County, North Carolina <br />