The Bayfield landfill on County Road 223 west of town was shut down in 1994 and replaced with the current transfer station. But the toxic legacy of the old days is still present. State health officials are pushing the county to get it fixed.
They met with county officials earlier this month. At issue is a compound called vinyl chloride that continues to be detected beyond the bounds of the 32-acre landfill property.
Also at issue is a 29-page consent order proposed by the state.
“We’ve been working with (state officials) for some time now on the content of a consent order,” said county attorney Sheryl Rogers. Draft consent orders have been going back and forth since 2011.
Bob Peterson from the state’s solid waste permitting unit in Grand Junction said the state has issued three “compliance advisories” to the county between 2005 and 2010.
“Those aren’t official enforcement actions,” he said. “In those we requested actions. A lot of those have or are being done. The county has been engaged. But the extent of contamination in groundwater is still not defined.”
He added, “I think we’re pretty much on the same page for what needs to be done in the future.” But he noted the due date at the end of this month for a report on effectiveness of actions taken so far.
Decisions have to be made about whether remediation is working, but that can’t happen without knowing the extent of contamination, he said.
Participants looked at charts and diagrams prepared by the county. Just to the north and downhill from the current transfer station is an area where buried refuse is generating gas. A network of vents have been installed by the county to vent the gas, because it’s considered the transmission medium getting the vinyl chloride into the groundwater. Farther down hill is an area where buried refuse is saturated with water because of problems with the landfill cap that’s supposed to keep water out.
The flow of groundwater with vinyl chloride above state standards is toward County Road 223 and the east half of the Lions Club gun range. Some of the water being monitored is in bedrock in the Animas shale formation, and some is shallow alluvial water.
Peterson said there are 27 domestic water wells within a mile of the landfill. County Commissioner Julie Westendorff said that they are outside the defined contamination plume. A well on the property just east of the gun range has shown vinyl chloride, but not above state standards, county environmental official Leslie Jacoby said.
According to the history recounted in the draft consent order, the landfill had operated since the 1950s and was purchased by the county in 1970. Because of its age, the landfill wasn’t constructed with a liner or a leacheate collection system. An estimated 100,000 cubic yards of municipal trash was deposited in 15 of the 32 acres over 20-plus years.
Four groundwater monitoring wells were installed in 1986 and have been monitored since, currently semi-annually, the draft order says. Vinyl chloride above state standards was found in two of them in 2004 and 2005. The other two monitoring wells and two nearby domestic wells did not have vinyl chloride above state standards.
