Solid Waste - A Major Community Concern

The City of Huntington and the Cabell County Solid Waste Authority have been cooperating to come up with a solution for the court ordered closure of the Deitz Hollow landfill, which is located in Guyandotte. The order states that the closure of the landfill must be completed by 2017. But the recent cost estimate of $9 million, which the City of Huntington does not have, is obviously going to go up with each passing year

The landfill stopped accepting garbage in 1993, but the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection ordered that several closure steps had to be taken to ensure that water and contaminants do not damage adjacent soil and streams.

The citizens of Cabell County should be provided with an on-going status report on each shut-down-step leading to the final closure. In addition, the public should be kept abreast of all attempts to locate funding. Our leaders should understand that a well-informed citizenry is much more supportive of the efforts of our governments' leaders when it comes time to make hard decisions that may negatively affect taxpayers.

Obviously, the costs will keep increasing the longer it takes to close Deitz Hollow by the 2017 deadline. We know our political leaders are working on it. We just want to be kept informed about this issue and any plans for establishing another landfill for our county - so that we do not have to pay to transport all of our solid waste to another state.

I have read reports where some landfills in West Virginia are considering accepting solid waste from other states. Doesn't make sense to me that we are sending West Virginia solid waste out-of-state and exploring the possibility of accepting out-of-state solid waste into our state's landfills. Duh?

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