Neighbors skeptical over fill site

PALMER — To a crowd whose reactions seem to vary on a spectrum from skeptical to nearly hostile, a pair of businessmen tried to explain Tuesday exactly what they want to do in a gravel pit south of Palmer.

“Our goal is to have a monofill where we control what goes into it,” said Shane Durand with Central Monofill Services.

He said the monofill will contain construction debris. CMS recycles demolished buildings. Anything of value is sold off. What’s left over — about 20 percent of the material — would go into the pit.

Neighbors of the project, though, are worried about noise, trash polluting nearby lands and material getting into the water table.

Durand and his partner, Stuart Jacques, said that, for one thing, the materials are “inert” — they won’t pollute water tables. Jacques pointed out that those gathered in the Palmer Train Depot were sitting inside a building constructed from the same materials at issue.

“We’re already in here and we consider it safe. Why is it not any less safe when it’s in the ground?” Jacuques said.

But neighbors seemed unconvinced. Why does CMS want to do this in Palmer, near people’s homes?

Durand noted that the site is centrally located, zoned industrial and has access that allows trucks to stay out of residential neighborhoods.

What about asbestos? Plans for the site call for dumping asbestos.

Jacques pointed to materials wrapped up in two layers of thick plastic sheeting, saying that asbestos had to be disposed of that way and there are procedures to make sure the bags don’t rupture.

Also, “this material doesn’t move in groundwater,” he said. It settles out.

What about the noise?

Durand and Jacques noted that the operation would create less noise than the current gravel pit operations.

And property values?

Durand noted that another company runs a monofill by the Alaska State Fairgrounds. Homes in that subdivision show no disparity in value when comparing properties abutting the monofill to ones on the other side of the subdivision.

“Want to buy my house?” a skeptical audience member asked him.

“You sound like you’re talking to the tax appraiser,” Durand replied.

A lot of what was on people’s minds, though, was that CMS had been cited late last week for dumping without a permit and failing to clean it up when ordered. How were neighbors supposed to trust the company now?

Jacques said that the company believed it was operating inbounds.

“We were not required to have permission,” he told the audience.

He said what the company was doing was not dumping waste, but mulching it into a product and mixing with dirt. He said it’s a strange spot the company is in. They consider this product not waste to be disposed of, but essentially dirt. Regulators disagree; however, Jacques said, that might just be because the process the company uses is so new.

“This is different than what anybody has ever seen,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.