Two weeks after taking over the response to a landfill fire in Alabama, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say they’re still a few weeks away from stopping the smoke that is impacting nearby residents.
“There shouldn’t be, we hope, any noticeable smoke within about three weeks,” EPA On-scene Coordinator Terry Stilman told AL.com Friday.
Stilman said the EPA will be working at the site for four to six more weeks -- to put out the fire and cover the area that’s burning -- but that the smoke should be under control in about three.
The fire has been burning mostly underground since late November at the Environmental Landfill, Inc., a green waste dump about 15 miles northeast of Birmingham, inundating nearby residents in the cities of Moody and Trussville with smoke for two months and counting.
Residents living near the site have reported symptoms including coughing, red eyes, headaches, nausea, trouble sleeping and a smoke smell that never goes away.
Air monitoring from the site have shown improvement since the EPA assumed control of the site on January 18, but Stilman said the levels of particulate matter and chemical contaminants still could be hazardous.
“The amount of smoke is reduced, and the contamination that’s leaving the site is slowly going down,” Stilman said. “But there are still elevated levels of the contaminants that we are concerned about, mainly benzene.”
The EPA took over response from the state and county officials in mid-January after air samples showed high levels of chemicals including benzene and trichloroethylene (TCE). Both are considered human carcinogens, and the TCE indicates that some material other than natural wood is burning in the fire.
The federal agency was able to call on a private contractor it keeps on retainer to respond to situations like a landfill fire.
To extinguish the fire, the EPA plans to use heavy equipment to compact and level the site, then cover the remains of the fire with dirt to put it out. Contractors for the agency are using bulldozers and excavators to level and compact the waste pile and then adding layers of fill dirt on top once the area is fully prepped.
Contractors working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency work to put out a fire at an Alabama landfill on Wed., Feb. 1, 2023.Dennis Pillion
Stilman said the Agency has covered about 10-20 percent of the area with dirt already, with a lot of the early efforts focused on bringing in enough dirt to smother the fire and leveling and compacting the piles of burning material.
“Because of the fire, there are portions of the landfill that collapsed, and slopes that became very steep,” Stilman said. “You can’t have steep slopes. Number one, you won’t be able to maintain that over the long term. And number two, as part of smothering it, we don’t want any void spaces within the landfill itself.
“We had to fill in those collapsed areas, which means not just filling it, but also digging out the collapsed area and properly compacting it.”
The landfill was designated as a green waste landfill — designed to accept natural materials like fallen trees and other vegetation — but residents and inspectors for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management have reported finding scrap tires, electronics, appliances, car parts and other non-authorized waste at the site. ADEM has said it will investigate whether illegal dumping occurred at the site after the blaze is extinguished.
The main waste pile is estimated to be 100 feet deep in places, giving the fire plenty of fuel to burn for 10 weeks and counting.
Stilman said recent rains have impacted the work because the agency can’t bring in fill dirt while it’s raining.
The rain does not help extinguish the blaze, because it is mostly underground, though Stilman said it can tamp down any surface flames that may pop up.
Stilman said that when the agency is finished putting out the fire, they will add a clay soil cap on top of the dirt cover with vegetation on top to prevent runoff. There will not be a synthetic top liner as is required in closing a solid waste landfill.
He said the EPA is not expecting the site to be used as a landfill again after the response, but that the state of Alabama, not the federal agency, would regulate that.
“We don’t regulate green waste landfills,” Stilman said. “That’s a state function, but we’re not proposing to have it be able to be used as a landfill after this.”
