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Highlands Today

County Considers Lifting Ban On Private Landfills

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: January 21, 2009

SEBRING - Private landfills have been banned in Highlands County for more than a decade, but that may change.

The Highlands County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to consider amending land development regulations to allow private "C&D" landfills, for construction and demolition waste.

In doing so, the commissioners rejected the recommendation by county staff, including Administrator Michael Wright and Jim Polatty, development services director.

The commissioners did not commit to lifting the ban on private C&D landfills.

"I think we should explore the possibility," said Commissioner Don Bates, summing up the commissioners' discussion on the issue.

"I'm not saying I'm for this or against it," said Commissioner Guy Maxcy. He said the county commission can't make a good decision until a proposed regulation to allow private C&D landfills is written, researched and discussed in depth.

Wright said local governments throughout the state have had a "bad history" of having to take over and solve environmental problems at private landfills that were closed and then abandoned.

"Invariably, what's been our experience is that private landfills tend to become the responsibility of the government," he said.

The request to allow private C&D landfills came from The Great Fruit Company, which operates a sand mine off Desert Wind Road, just west of State Road 17, south of U.S. 98.

Attorney Bert J. Harris III, representing the company, said the sand excavation pit will be depleted in several years and the company hopes to use the pit as a C&D disposal site. Once the landfill was closed, he said, the site would be reclaimed for agricultural production.

Harris showed commissioners an aerial photo of a citrus grove on top of a closed landfill in the Avon Park area. Old landfills, he said, "can be properly regulated and converted into a beautiful citrus grove on top of that land."

"What I'm concerned about," Wright said, "is there are probably more examples of landfills that have been abandoned than have been reclaimed."

The disposal cost for C&D waste could be cut by two-thirds, Harris said, as private landfills in Fort Meade and DeSoto County are charging one-third the price of the Highlands County landfill for dumping construction and demolition waste.

Wright said further discussion on the issue has to include the effect on revenues at the county landfill.

"Our overhead would probably stay the same but our revenue would go down," he said.

Two homeowners living near The Great Fruit Company site, Randy Smith and H.W. McIntyre, asked commissioners not to consider allowing private landfills. Both said they were concerned that a landfill nearby could contaminate the aquifer that supplies their well water.

"You're opening a can of worms," McIntyre said about potential environmental problems from landfills.

Commissioner Barbara Stewart said all questions about environmental concerns must be answered before the county could consider lifting the ban on private landfills.

"If this goes forward," she said, "we need to make sure our lakes are protected to the maximum extent possible. That's what's most important, our aquifers and our lakes."

Commissioner Jeff Carlson said allowing private landfills would have to include a provision making the owner financially responsible for any problems after the landfill is closed.

If the ban on private landfills is lifted, each proposed C&D landfill would require a special use permit approved by the county commissioners.

Sand mining pits are fairly common on the Lake Wales Ridge, Polatty said. As a result, he said, if private C&D landfills are allowed, "we could anticipate many of these around the county."

Highlands Today reporter Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com

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