Freedom Industries waste headed for Charleston landfill
Charleston Gazette
State regulators have been helping Freedom Industries work out a plan to dump about 800 tons of contaminated soil in the Charleston landfill.
The soil is from the site of the January 2014 chemical spill along the Elk River. Also, city officials are considering one option under which Charleston would take over the property where the spill occurred.
Department of Environmental Protection officials said Tuesday that Freedom Industries had informed DEP that a deal had been reached between Freedom’s chief restructuring officer, Mark Welch, and representatives of Waste Management Inc., which operates the landfill for the city.
DEP spokeswoman Kelley Gillenwater said agency officials did not negotiate the arrangement, but assisted Welch by assuring Waste Management officials that the material was “non-hazardous” and could therefore be accepted by the landfill.
“The remediation of the former Freedom site is a top priority for DEP and finding a financially reasonable disposal option for this waste is paramount to that effort,” Gillenwater said in an email message.
A request for a “special waste” approval authorizing the material to be dumped at the Charleston landfill has not yet been submitted to DEP, Gillenwater said.
Disposal at the landfill would save Freedom, which is going through liquidation in bankruptcy court, on the cost of transporting the waste, perhaps a long distance to an out-of-state facility, officials said.
Amanda Marks-Cunningham, a spokeswoman for Waste Management, said the Charleston landfill has not yet committed to accepting the waste from Freedom Industries. She said that the company is “awaiting additional analytical results” and “regulatory direction” from DEP.
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http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150428/GZ01/150429168/1453
