Story originally printed in the Vernon Broadcaster or online at www.vernonbroadcaster.com
Published - Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Some seek change in county’s position on landfill
Some members of the Vernon County Solid Waste Committee would like the county to reconsider its stance on siting an ash landfill next to the existing Vernon County landfill.
The county agreed to work with Dairyland Power Cooperative in December and the county board passed a resolution to pursue the option of siting the landfill next to the existing landfill. It is one of three sites Dairyland is considering to landfill coal ash from its Genoa power plant.
Dairyland officials have said the cooperative needs the landfill because the Genoa coal-fired power plant will have to landfill about eight times the amount of ash that it currently landfills after next year when the facility turns on "scrubbers" that will remove much of the sulfur from the plant's smokestack. To remove the sulfur, the scrubbers will inject lime into the waste stream. That lime and the ash that is collected after the process has no suitable use and must be put in a landfill, Dairyland has said.
"The way the county resolution reads right now, it appears as though we are advocating for the landfill to be sited here (next to the exiting landfill)," committee member Dennis Brault said. "I am not sure that is the position we want to take."
Brault lives in the town of Viroqua district, where the landfill is proposed and has a home downstream from the existing landfill.
"I am fine with continuing to work with Dairyland, but I don't think the county should be advocating for one site or another," Brault said.
Dairyland began looking at the possibility of the needed landfill next to the Vernon County facility after it got resistance to the two sites originally picked out in the town of Harmony. County officials, including solid waste administrator Gail Frie, were in favor of investigating the town of Viroqua option to see if there was a way to site the facility that could minimize the impact to the county.
"We don't think this is a good idea anywhere," Brault said. "Whether it is here or the town of Harmony we think recycling is the way to solve this."
Brault said he and other citizens in the town have been in contact with a company in West Virginia that recycles scrubber waste into an aggregate that can be used as a construction material.
Another town of Viroqua resident, Chuck Doerr, presented Frie and the solid waste committee with another stack of signatures asking the committee and Frie to reconsider their positions. The signatures are in addition to those presented at an earlier solid waste meeting. Doerr presented 504 signatures on a petition that addresses the solid waste committee and another 398 asking Frie to reconsider his position.
The committee took no action on the issue, but agreed to continue talking about a possible recommendation to the county board to change the wording of the resolution to work with Dairyland.
"We are fine with that," Brian Rude, the director of external communications for Dairyland Power Cooperative, said.
Rude said as long as the county is willing to continue to pursue the option, and wants to take more of an informational role rather than advocating for a specific option, Dairyland will continue to work with the county.
All stories copyright 2006 Vernon Broadcaster and other attributed sources.