By Erica Solvig
The Cincinnati Enquirer

UNION TWP. - Many southern Warren County residents who got used to life without a landfill here are furious that another heap of trash might become their newest neighbor.

They fear the quiet area near the Little Miami River, about 1‡ miles northwest of Morrow, would be forever changed by the rumbling of garbage trucks and another landfill built up next to the capped Bigfoot Run I site.

INFOGRAPHIC

Map of area landfills

As the Tristate population approaches 2 million, the amount of waste generated continues to grow. What to do with it is a question under debate by those living in Warren County, Colerain Township, Fairfield and other booming suburban communities.

While landfill companies struggle with the increased need and continue their search for more space, experts say there's little rural area left for them to use.

"There is this tendency by developers to keep sprawling," said Michael Romanos, a University of Cincinnati professor of economic development. "It is a very wasteful growth because it's scattered and it uses too much land."

The situation leaves John and Erin Pakozdi of Warren County's Union Township - a community that's growing by about 1.5 percent in population per year - grappling with the idea that they might be living next to a dump.

The couple, with four children ages 9 years to 6 months, hadn't heard about the landfill when they moved in 2000 to property that backs into the proposed site.

"It's an absolutely beautiful view - that's why we moved here," Mr. Pakozdi, 38, said as he looked across a grassy field lined by rolling hills. "If you stand in our back yard, we see all this.

"But all that will be wiped out."

Browning-Ferris Industries, now owned by Arizona-based Allied Waste Inc., applied for a permit to install Bigfoot Run II in 1998. The 59-acre site is next to Bigfoot Run I, which was closed in May 1999 and topped with about 4 feet of clay and vegetation layers.

If approved, Bigfoot II would be the only landfill in Warren County. It would accept up to 3,000 tons of non-hazardous waste daily for a 10-year lifespan. Haulers have been taking area trash to other dumps in the region, mostly to the Rumpke landfill in Hamilton County, since Bigfoot I closed.

The view: Rolling hills, garbage

"I just can't fathom to think of the idea of beep, beep, beep and vroom, vroom, vroom all day long," said Bob Miranda, a 62-year-old resident. "It's not just the landfill. It's the noise, the air pollution and everything that comes with it."

He and his wife, Jean, have lived in the area for more than 20 years, and when they heard Bigfoot Run I was closing about five years ago, they chose Trovillo Road - adjacent to the proposed new site - to retire. They've thought about selling, but can't bear the thought of leaving.

BFI's attorney, C. Francis Barrett, said the site is ideal because much of the infrastructure is in place from Bigfoot Run I. He said residents' concerns about smell and noise would not be issues.

Bigfoot Run I, covered daily with soil while in use, got few complaints about any odor, he said. And dump trucks will use Mason-Morrow-Millgrove Road, already used by trucks, and will bring less traffic than would a residential subdivision.

Mr. Barrett said Bigfoot Run II has never been a secret, and residents were given plenty of notification. They also got a chance to voice concerns - including the impact on a nearby nature preserve - to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency at public meeting Oct. 17.

"People look at it as a quality-of-life issue," said Heather Lauer, Ohio EPA spokeswoman. "But that's not something we can take into consideration."

That's no relief for Bill and Claudia Brausch, whose 10-acre property is adjacent to the proposed site.

"We would literally have garbage within 531 feet of our front door," said Mr. Brausch, who has owned the land since the late 1970s.

Regulations require a landfill to be at least 1,000 feet away from homes, but it's unclear whether the rule applies here since their $300,000, two-story log home was not built when BFI applied for its permits.

Nationally, the number of municipal waste landfills is on the decline, from 8,000 in 1988 to 1,967 in 2000, according to the U.S. EPA.

The United States produced about 232 million tons of municipal waste in 2000. That's about 4.5 pounds of waste per person each day - up from 2.7 pounds people produced daily in 1960, according to the U.S. EPA.

"We have more and more garbage, and we're at the point where landfills are not able to meet those needs," said UC's Mr. Romanos, who has worked on planning issues across the country. "We are becoming a more wasteful society. Everything that we use now is prepackaged ... It is a national phenomenon.

"But Cincinnati is probably on the top of the list, along with Washington, Atlanta and Seattle, in terms of suburban sprawl," he said.

`It stinks to high heaven'

Garbage disposal is raising concerns in many Tristate communities:

In Colerain Township, residents are upset that the Rumpke landfill, Hamilton County's largest, wants to expand by 41 percent to accept up to 10,000 tons of non-hazardous waste daily.

At a September meeting with the Ohio EPA, residents said they were worried about potential health threats connected with landfill operations, including airborne particulate matter and the chemicals sprayed to combat landfill odors.

"People just hear landfill and think that they don't want it. They don't realize why it's needed," Rumpke spokeswoman Shelly Sack said. "We've got two years left, and we're running out of time."

In Butler County's Wayne Township, residents also have waste disposal concerns - in the form of sewer sludge that is being spread on area farmland. For years, local farmers had used the solids from the waste treatment process as nutrients for their crops, but now Middletown has been asked to stop spreading its sludge here.

"It stinks to high heaven," Trustee Bill McIntire said.

Across the state, more than 60 percent of all sludge is spread, said Chris Bowman, an Ohio EPA environmental specialist.

"It's a way of keeping the material out of a landfill, because they're running out of room," he said. "Yet we're also running out of land space to put it. And when you get more people out there where the sludge is being applied, the nuisance odor becomes a big problem."

In Fairfield, residents don't want sludge either, but the Cincinnati Water Works wants to put a 9-acre sludge pit for lime residue behind some of the city's most expensive homes. City Council will vote on the issue tonight.

These problems could be avoided with more regional planning, Mr. Romanos said. The suburbs are expected to continue growing, but no one's thinking about where to put the resulting garbage.

"We don't look at these things comprehensively," he said. "But if we had done this planning ahead of time, this issue would be moot."

For now, companies and communities continue battling over trash disposal one dump at a time. In Warren County, there are a few hurdles still to be jumped.

One is an appeal pending in 12th District Court of Appeals regarding a Warren County judge's 2001 ruling that the county commissioners' rejection of the landfill unconstitutionally denied BFI "any economically viable use" of the land.

Another is the 96 points of concern cited by the Ohio EPA. BFI must address those before the agency will issue a draft permit.

The public would have at least 30 days to review the EPA's decision before a formal public hearing.

"We're not against landfills, but this is the wrong place for one," Mr. Brausch said.

E-mail esolvig@enquirer.com