Is relief coming to Snow Hill?

Part 1 of 2

(Editor’s note: Snow Hill resident Paul Fisher talks about how the landfill has impacted his life. See that story Wednesday)

Signs of relief are slowly making their way through the Snow Hill community following the recent settlement between local environmental injustice group EJCAN and GFL over the decades-long issues surrounding the Sampson County landfill.

While the settlement is meant to finally address the ongoing pollution and environmental concerns, such as water contamination from PFAS, what it will mean for the residents in the largely black and Latino area of Sampson County is multi-faceted.

In a release issued by EJCAN, after an agreement was reached in the settlement, it states GFL will be tasked with providing community-led relief by, “putting resources and information in the community’s hands to care for their safety and health and start rebuilding after decades of ignored concerns,” said Sherri White-Williamson, EJCAN executive director, said.”

In the same release it listed four major fronts GFL is responsible for upholding, based on the agreement. It includes:

• GFL will use methane-sensing drones to identify emissions hot spots and retain an independent consultant to develop a continuous air pollution monitoring system around the perimeter of the landfill.

• GFL will establish a community fund to be managed by and for Snow Hill residents.

• GFL will also hold regular meetings with community members and establish a complaint response and escalation mechanism.

White-Williamson offered a deeper explanation of all four parts of the agreement.

The example given for eliminating PFAS detailed that the landfill is currently discharging approximately 1,000 parts per trillion of PFOA — a type of PFAS — into Bearskin Swamp. The agreement requires the landfill to reduce that discharge. In addition, GFL agreed to decline all new waste contracts for PFAS clean-up (of) waste streams from military bases and fire-fighting foams until these standards are met.

Measures like those are supposed to drastically cut down on PFAS pollution in the landfill.

The landfill has been established in Sampson since 1973. Today it spans approximately 1,000 acres, according to EJCAN, annually accepting 1.8 million tons of waste.

With PFAS affecting streams and groundwater near the landfill for decades, how bad does it actually look and is eliminating it feasible?

“Well DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) did independent testing around the landfill last year and discovered that the levels of PFAS being released from the landfill into Bearskin Swamp was higher than limits the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) had placed on certain of those compounds,” White-Williamson said. “They also actually did some testing of homes out there, and found that PFAS was 10 times higher in the well water, in homes out there, than was allowable.

“So part of working towards eliminating PFAS is that there’s going to be an independent monitor. They will be looking at what’s coming out of the landfill and providing a report, at least biannually to the community, so that they will know. But, the most important part of the discharge, or what will happen with discharges, is that GFL has agreed to the maximum contaminant level, MCL, of those compounds coming out of the landfill, which is huge.

“I’ve gotten some comments back from some folks who work on this kind of stuff, and they’re telling me that this, indeed, was a major accomplishment to have gotten something like this,” she added, noting, “particularly for this community that’s been trying to get some kind of resolution to some of the current concerns out there for so long.”

Another aspect of the agreement involves air monitoring which GFL will be required to implement to the maximum extent practicable. Those measures are meant to help highlight emissions of heat trapping gases, limit airborne PFAS emissions and address odor issues.

That will be done via methane-sensing drones to identify emissions hot spots and the hiring of an independent consultant to develop a continuous air pollution monitoring system around the perimeter of the landfill.

While that is one of the key points from the settlement, White-Williamson said EJCAN has multiple programs currently being worked on to tackle those issues.

“We have a number of programs we’re doing,” she said. “We have the air monitoring program and we’ve been doing the water testing. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reached out to us last year to ask if we’d be interested in partnering with them. They were applying for a grant, and through that grant, we’ll be able to expand the water testing in Sampson County.

“We probably won’t actually get that funding until later on this year, but through that, we’ll be able to do at least 300 homes a year and potentially mitigate at least 175 of those homes if we find problems in them,” White-Williamson said.

“We’re also doing, and I know biogas is controversial around here, but we just started that project,” she added. “We’re trying to, in conjunction with a place called Research Triangle Institute to start doing some pre and post monitoring of the air quality in certain parts of the county. That’s a project but we’ve got about three or four projects going on right now.”

Research Triangle Institute, she said, is an international organization headquartered in the Research Triangle.

White-Williamson also noted that with the planned air monitoring in Sampson County residents will have online access to the findings so they can view what’s happening.

“To do air monitoring in Sampson County part of that will be a follow-up meeting with what we’re calling our air fellows,” she explained. “Those are the folks who actually have the air monitors, and they do a quarterly meeting. Clean Air Carolina actually received the funding, but we are partnering with them to make sure that we have folks here in Sampson County that actually have those air monitors.”

“That monitoring, it’s a national system that folks can actually go online and see what’s happening,” White-Williamson added. “It’s called Purple Air, and again, people can actually go online and see what’s happening in their area if there is an air monitor in their community.”

An eye-catcher from those four major bullet points was that GFL is required to establish a community fund that will be managed by Snow Hill’s residents. As EJCAN’s release stated, its purpose is addressing environmental, environmental justice, and public health issues impacting the community. Also of note is that members of the Snow Hill community have discretion to determine which projects to fund, so long as they are consistent with the fund’s purpose.

“Well, the amount is confidential,” White-Williamson said. “We had a meeting with the Snow Hill community to give them details about that. The community fund will be managed by the Snow Hill community, and it will be a third party administrator that’s actually going to be over maintaining the money or keeping the money in an account for access by the Snow Hill community.”

It was also noted that GFL had agreed to additional benefits including establishing recycling and composting education in local public schools.

The remaining point was about establishing dialect between GFL and Snow Hill residents. Part of that is GFL holding meetings so they are abreast of the concerns coming from those being affected by the landfill. That front is something White-Williamson said has been missing between the two, hence its purpose in the agreement.

“In the past, the community has not received a lot of feedback from GFL; there’s not necessarily been a lot of interaction,” she said. “Quite frankly, the community felt like they were not being heard and were not being able to hear from GFL. So as a part of this, GFL has committed to having regular meetings with the community.”

That wasn’t the only aspect of the agreement as residents still have complaints with no way to air their frustrations outside those meeting. White-Williamson said that was also taken into consideration and is being addressed.

“One of the other things that we heard from the community was that it didn’t matter how they complained about the smell, that nothing was ever done,” she said. “We talked with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, who regulates landfills, and they said that they never got any complaints from the community, so there was sort of this disagreement between what was actually going on.

“So part of this process now is that GFL will actually institute a system so that folks can directly complain through a website to them,” she added. “With it GFL will take care of responding to whatever that complaint a person is submitting and saying the problem is. If it isn’t handled within seven business days, then GFL says they will put in place a system that will escalate the issues so that complaints get responded to in a timely fashion.”