ffiii it hurt farmland?
York
BY JOYCE BUPP
Staff Correspondent
SEVEN VALLEYS -
Traveling over billy Panther
Road on bis way from one
farm to another early this
Spring, Nelson Brenneman,
Spring Grove R 1 dairy and
crops former, spied a well
drilling rig in a field just off
the dirt roadway.
“It was set-up on another
neighbor’s property. That
neighbor was' alerted, and
they were asked to get off,”
recalled Brenneman. The
drilling rig disappeared.
Then some weeks later,
while hauling manure from
the family’s 50-head milking
herd, Brenneman spotted a
stranger checking wells on
adjacent property.
Questioning eventually led to
the revelation that a permit
to dump industrial
Stabatrol has begun working on roads to haul
trucks loaded with barrels of toxic wastes into the
treatment and above-ground storage site.
Corn waves over a former solid waste landfill
site operated in the mid-70's by Sunny Farms. Just
beyond the field, at the site of the old cattle feedlot
sheds, farmers say the barrels of toxic chemicals
will be stored on skids above ground. When suf
ficient quantities are gathered, and the soil con
ditions are correct for burial, the neutralized
wastes will be deposited in underground vaults.
Hoff Road, which runs through the Stabatrol dumpsite, had been temporarily
closed by supervisors. Farmers in the area point to the dirt throughway’s foot
deep gullies as one example of the washout and runoff that comes down from the
hillside farmland.
County farmers
wastes nearby had been
issued by the state’s
Department of En
vironmental Resources to
Stabatrol, Inc., of
Norristown, on December
17,1979.
, The dump site is part of
more than 500 acres owned
by the York County In
dustrial Development
Authority and leased to
Sunny Farms, Ltd. Sunny
Farms is a subsidiary of
Stabatrol, and formerly
operated a solid waste
landfill and has been grain
fanning the tillable land on
the property. At one time, a
cattle feedlot was also m
operation near the ridge of
the hillside farmland.
But the land that im
mediately bounds the
Brenneman dairy farm, and
where the drilling rig was
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actually supposed to be when
Brenneman first spotted it,
is a plot of over 80 acres
earmarked for disposal use
by Liqwacon, Inc.
Liqwacon, officials later
found, had applied for an
industrial waste site permit
in May, but licensing has not
yet been granted. Ad
ditionally, Allied Chemical
has plans to use a portion of
the site for burial of their
industrial chemical wastes,
industrial chemical wastes.
It was near the end of July
when fanners, residents,
North Codorus township
officials, and legislators
finally dug up enough details
to begin piecing together the
bits of the plan. An
nouncement of the permit
had been made, DER and
company officials said, in
the Pennsylvania Bulletin, a
state-issued publication of
state government activities.
A letter of notification was
also to have been sent to
township officials, but
allegedly went to a super
visor out of office for the past
two years. That letter has
not yet been found.
Because a-subdivision plan
of the property had never
been submitted for township
approval, the municipality
sought and won a injunction
off August 21 'from York
County Courts to halt further
dumping planning. At that
court hearing, Stabatrol
allegedly agreed to subnut
subdivision plans. Contrary
to a report last week in
Lancaster Fanning, the
township still has not yet
received that property
division plan.
After that plan is received,
the township has ninety days
to take action, and dumping
could begin immediately
after approval. In order to
stop construction of road
ways onto the property from
the township’s Hoff Road,
which bisects the dumping
sites, the dirt road had been
temporarily closed by the
North Codorus officials.
Farm owners have teamed
with their non-farm
neighbors into a group
they’ve labeled OUCH, an
acronymn for Opposing
Unnecessary Chemical
Hazards. A fund for legal
defense has been set up at
the Jefferson branch of
fight chemical dump
Peoples’ Bank of Glen Rock,
and a public information and
petition-signing campaign
against the waste site is
underway.
The York County Farmers
Association has been called
into the fray and, in Bren
neman’s words, is “deeply
involved.”
Irate farm families are
especially questioning the
methods of “neutralization
and encapsulation”
disposals that are planning
for the waste burial.
Stabatrol has patented a
method of “vaulting”, which
the July-August issue of
Next magazine labeled a
“poisonous cement sand
wich.”
First, a site must be found
where the soil is compatible
for mixing with Portland
Cement. In excavated pits,
the cement would be mixed
with soil to form “soil
cement,” preferably two
layers, each six inches thick.
That soil cement layer is
then covered with a
waterproof sheet of a
polyethyelene type material.
Treated, neutralized waste
is dumped into the prepared
vault and covered over with
another piece *of plastic
sheeting, and then sealed at
Nelson Brenneman points out to his wife, Judy, left, and daughter, Esther, the
gap in the woods where the proposed dump site of Liqwacon, Inc., would bound
their dairying operation property.
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Farm owner Stephen Marsh is president of OUCH, Inc., the citizens’ group
opposing the granting of permits for burial toxic chemical wastes.
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the edges. Another layer of
the cement mix goes on top,
covered over with layers of
earth, about three feet deep.
Eventually, the land is to
be restored to its present
use: growing com and other
farm crops.
Allied ' Chemical’s plans
center on neutralizing the
wastes, mixing with dirt and
cement, and then burying
blocks of liie hardened
sludge. Liqwacon, whose
land drains toward Nelson
Brenneman’s 1165 home
farm acres m cattle feed
crops, would store
neutralized wastes in a one
eighth to one-fourth thick
PVC liner in sand-lined
holes.
The companies involved
generate heavy metal
wastes like lead, chromium
mercury, cadmium, copper
hydroxides, and possibly
such toxic materials as
cyanide and arsenic.
Although the systems are
to be “fail-safe” against
leakage, Stephen Marsh,
Seven Valleys Rl, sees it
differently. Marsh is' the
president of OUCH, Inc., and
describes himself as a part
tune farmer.
“Three Mile Island taught
me what fail-safe means,”
he grimly noted while
heading up a citizen’s
meeting of some 300
disgruntled residents in the
Seven Valleys Fire Hall last
week. i “Ihe . long range
knowledge on this problem is
nonexistent.”
One aggravated citizen at
that meeting suggested that
the area’s groundhogs
wouldn’t be deterred by the
shallow soil covering
required over the buned
wastes. An even greater
worry is that the area has
experienced two minor
earthquakes in recent years,
although neither was strong
enough to have registered on
the Richter scale.
Farmers are angry that
DER says the site is not
chiefly farmland when it’s
been exclusively used for
drop production for the past
several years, and the land
surrounding it is considered
prime farmland.
Marsh, who’s spent most
of his spare hours for the last
month doing leg work on the
dump problem, lives across
Green Valley just down the
hill from the Stabatrol
planned waste burial site. He
farms 35 acres in corn and
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