5 Reasons Residents Hate the Landfill Plan

On Thursday, hundreds of area residents packed Crofton Elementary School to voice their concerns about Tolson & Associates' proposal to at the end of Capitol Raceway Road.

Here's an analysis of five of their main objections. 

The Public Participation Process—After the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) rejected plans by Cunningham Excavating to build a rubble landfill on the site in 2004, residents assumed that was the end of things. But in reality, Tolson has been working with MDE on its proposal ever since then. Many community leaders said they were not informed of Tolson’s plan until after MDE issued a preliminary approval of the project.

“Would you not be better off having the applicant in this matter reach out to the surrounding community associations and meet with them to discuss the plans?” asked Andrew Pruski, president of the Four Seasons Community Association. “Hold a few meetings, this is a big deal.”

Pollution—Officials from Tolson & Associates insisted that the rubble landfill will not be a depository for the most toxic kinds of trash and that any leachate—or rainwater flowing through the debris—from the site would be caught by a heavy plastic liner and then delivered out to a wastewater plant. But residents were unsatisfied, citing a concern that only one independent inspector would be on site at any time. Residents said they also had little faith that the landfill’s protective liner would prevent against all leachate seeping into groundwater.

“It’s a piece of plastic. Anytime you put a hole in it, it’s going to leak,” said Norm Harvey, president of the Greater Gambrills Improvement Association.

Traffic—Tolson said it will operate about 120 trucks on the site each day, and all of them would enter and exit the site off of Route 3. The trucks would represent about 20 new trucks on the road each hour, according a fact sheet provided by MDE. While MDE said that represents just a 0.7 percent increase in traffic, residents said the agency and Tolson failed to factor in the impact of traffic coming from nearby development, especially the Village South at Waugh Chapel Project.

Some residents were also skeptical of Tolson’s claim that trucks would not operate during peak traffic hours. One man who once worked as a trash truck driver said it was common for trucks to line up at the entrance of a landfill in the very early morning in order to get in and get out quickly.

Noise—According to Tolson’s application, the noise from the landfill would comply with Maryland law by being under 90 decibels at the boundary of the property. But residents accused Tolson of underestimating the cumulative effect of machine noise and was using incomplete information regarding the height of buildings adjacent to the landfill property.

Residents also said Tolson was not taking into account noise from truck backup beepers, which emit a noise of between 97 and 112 decibels at the source.

Relationship with Cunningham—Local residents have, at best, a complex relationship with the Cunningham family, which owns the landfill property and whose previous efforts to build a rubble landfill there were turned down. Tolson & Associates claims that Cunningham has no role in the new project, but residents were not convinced of Tolson’s independence. 

“While Cunningham Sand and Gravel are not a party to this application, they own the property,” Pruski said. “It does not matter what LLC is listed on the permit, they should be a part of this process.”

Pruski also hinted that Tolson was violating the spirit of an agreement between the community and Cunningham. Under a deal struck with Cunningham many years ago, the Four Seasons Community agreed to allow a mining operation on the site in exchange for money placed in a community benefits funds. But according to Pruski, residents were left with the impression that the site would be closed with clean fill once the mining operation ceased.