WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | Kim-Stan Landfill clean up is complete

Kim-Stan Landfill clean up is complete

The land is a little cleaner for one spot in Alleghany County, but it took awhile to get that way.

Before it was shut down, the Environmental Protection Agency says about 865,000 tons of waste poured into the Kim-Stan Landfill.
 
The owners brought in out-of-state trash to the small piece of land near Low Moor, outraging those who lived nearby.
 
A court ordered the landfill to shut down in 1990, and the owners abandoned the contaminated area leaving no one to take care of the cleanup.

In 1999, the EPA decided the land was hazardous and eligible for federal cleanup funding.  It placed the landfill on its Superfund National Priorities List, and the agency began cleaning it up in 2004.

Now, besides a few minor items, clean up is complete.  That's news many people have been waiting a long time to hear.

Alicia Gordon was part of a committee that fought to clean the site.  She says she went to her first meeting nearly 20 years ago.

"We would meet and try and figure out what was going on initially, and then try and figure out how to stop what was going on, which was garbage filling our community," says Gordon.

"Surprisingly, it made it to the Superfund list and they came in and made it right," says Alleghany County Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve Bennett.

Anthony Iacobone, the project manager from the EPA, says the area was not a good spot for a landfill.  There's too much rain, and the landfill sits in a valley which collects water from surrounding mountains.

"The surrounding mountains all kind of drain into this landfill, so we needed a way to capture that water and prevent it from leaving the site," says Iacobone.

First, a pipeline was built to send the runoff to a treatment plant in Low Moor.  That plant was enlarged to accommodate the extra waste.  Then, a cap was put in place over the landfill to keep water out.  The cap is also meant to help the site blend in with its surroundings.

"Hopefully it'll turn green and the trees will grow and the grass will grow," says Bennett.

The EPA will control the site for the next year and make sure everything runs smoothly and stays clean.  Then, the agency will hand it over to the state.

"I think we did a really good job for the people in this area," says Iacobone.  "They put up with this landfill for a long time."

"Now we're at a place where we have closure, and we need to decide what do with it," says Gordon.

Whatever they decide to do with it, it will never be used as a landfill.