If the Alabama Department of Environmental Management really wants the public to be involved in the public hearing over a landfill expansion in the Coal City area of St. Clair County, officials ought to heed the request to delay the hearing until after Christmas.Setting the hearing just four days before the holiday is an unreasonable time to get the most involvement, but county officials and landowners in the area say they’ll fight the matter anyway.
ADEM is using a 1992 decision by the St. Clair County Commission to say, 14 years later, it’s OK to add onto the landfill, significantly upping its capacity.
In that decision, county officials decided to allow a future expansion if the property was adjoining the landfill. This site, they say, does not adjoin although the company plans to use the same, single entrance, and St. Clair officials vow to fight it.
The company that owns the property in question says it is looking for other alternatives during this holding pattern in the permitting process, and that is a wiser move.
If it can acquire land that is adjoining but has more of a buffer from area landowners with better environmental safeguards, it is certainly worth considering. “Veolia (the company that owns the landfill) wants to be a good corporate citizen and work with our neighbors to come to an agreement.”
That goal should be the aim of all involved, ADEM included.
