
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) has granted a permit to allow Rumpke Consolidated Companies Inc., Cincinnati, to expand its use of the Bond Road landfill in Whitewater Township.
The new permit will enable the company to haul up to 1,500 tons per day to the 575-acre area on the Ohio-Indiana border, WCPO reports, which is more than 15 times what its previous permit allowed .
Rumpke said it has no immediate plans to haul more waste to the site, but instead is accommodating for “the future needs of the region.”
“We don’t have an exact timeline for when we’ll start using it,” Rumpke Spokesperson Molly Yeager told WCPO. “We are working on building a new entrance on Sand Run Road that will give us better access to the site. But that infrastructure is not complete yet.”
The permit says Rumpke expects to haul about 400 tons to the site per day, a move that would keep the landfill in use for 48 years. If Rumpke expands to the 1,500-ton maximum, the landfill will reach capacity in less than 13 years.
“We’re just trying to help protect the environment from society’s waste,” Yeager said. “Landfills are highly regulated. They are designed to protect the environment from [waste]. THERE [are] many environmental protections are there to ensure that things like waste water are properly managed here on site. “
The Ohio EPA held a public hearing in April to address any community concerns, many of which were related to increased traffic and groundwater contamination.
In questions answered, the Ohio EPA explained that Rumpke has four storage facilities with a total of 80,000 gallons to collect groundwater, or leachate, from the site.
That storage capacity can increase to 322,000 gallons under the new permit. Air quality is regulated by an EPA permit that was last renewed in June. The Ohio EPA says it lacks the current authority to regulate the hauling of solid waste from locations outside of Hamilton County and that it cannot “consider road impacts or home values when evaluating weight in the solid waste permit application.”