Source: http://www.macombdaily.com, December 2, 2016
By: Mitch Hotts
The South Macomb Disposal Authority has voted to forward all bills for clean-up efforts at the closed landfills at Freedom Hill County Park to the Macomb County Executive’s office for payment.
The costs are related to damage done when a contractor dumped up to 200,000 cubic yards on a gravel parking lot, destroying methane gas vents from the capped landfill.
“We made a motion to direct bills that come through us be sent over to the county executive’s office,” said SMDA Chairman and St. Clair Shores Mayor Kip Walby. “The motion passed unanimously.”
The SMDA is a group of five communities that are responsible for several closed landfills in the county.
The clean-up costs, which include civil engineering and consulting, are not known yet, but officials estimate it could be several hundred thousand dollars.
Macomb County Chief Deputy Executive Mark Deldin said the bills will be paid for by Dan’s Excavating, the company that caused the damage.
“We told the SMDA to send any invoices our way,” Deldin said. “The contractor has agreed to pay for engineering costs relating to the clean-up in the last three or four weeks. The county will be held harmless.”
The engineer from Dan’s Excavating, which is overseeing the project, was not available to comment late Thursday afternoon.
Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel allowed Dan’s Excavating to dump up clean fill dirt on a gravel parking lot at the county parking lot-turned-concert venue to create a pair of berms this past summer. The berms are designed to deflect noise and headlights from area neighbors.
The work damaged dozens of vents used to air out naturally occurring methane gas from the landfill and caused leachate to begin flowing from the site.
Hackel has maintained Dan’s Excavating performed the work for free because the firm otherwise would have had to pay for disposing the dirt in a qualified landfill.
Warren Mayor James Fouts — who has been vocal in his criticism over how the executive’s office has handled the episode — said in a news release that if the contractor had taken the excavated materials to a landfill, it would have cost about $90,000 to dispose of, plus transport costs.
The landfill was operated by the SMDA for about two decades before it was closed. A 2005 consent decree between the SMDA and the state mandates any changes to soil requires Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approval.
MDEQ inspectors walk the landfill property in the spring and fall. The damage was discovered during the fall walk-through, officials said.
No permits were obtained from the MDEQ, a move that Deldin has said was an oversight. The only permit secured was a soil erosion permit issued by Sterling Heights.
“I would like to commend the SMDA board for passing a resolution as its Nov. 30 (meeting) not to pay for any clean-up costs,” Fouts said in the release. “Instead, the board recommended that any clean-up costs be billed to the contractor or Mr. Hackel’s office since Mr. Hackel gave the contractor permission to illegally dump at the landfill.”
Meanwhile, the SMDA board also voted to send a proposed corrective action plan to MDEQ for review.
The plan calls for plugging 12 existing leachate seeps; repairing gas vents; reducing the slope of the berms; installing 30 to 40 tree wells that were planted as part of a remediation plan.
Walby, the SMDA chairman, said the work will continue into the spring of 2017.
“It is important to note that once the SMDA was alerted to this problem, we were on the ball to address it. We know there is an issue and will repair it,” he said.