An agreement reached between the owner of Sampson’s landfill and a local environmental group is the first of what we hope will be many steps to help residents here, especially those in the Snow Hill community near Roseboro, and in the same fell swoop help to clean up what environmentalists say is years of pollution concerns in the area.
It won’t resolve all the problems, we are sure, but it’s a move in the right direction.
Last week, a release from the Environmental Justice Community Action Network detailed the federally-filed agreement completed on their behalf by the Southern Environmental Law Center. It is, the release notes, a court-enforceable agreement that would provide community-led relief to the “rural, predominantly black and Latino neighborhood of Snow Hill for the first time in decades.”
The agreement still must be adopted by the court, but its framework offers a glimpse into purported issues at the landfill that have spanned decades and the things that need to be done to help right the wrongs spanning all those years, wrongs that include sending harmful industrial “forever chemicals” to the landfill for years, chemicals linked to harmful health concerns like cancer.
We plan a story later this week talking to Sherri White-Williamson, EJCAN’s executive director, and residents of the Snow Hill community about problems that have existed within their neighborhood since the landfill was first approved back in the 70s and then expanded in the early 1990s.
Sampson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jerol Kivett said he believes the current landfill owner, GFL ,will handle the situation in a professional and diligent manner and follow any new guidelines set forth by state, federal or local regulations.
In comments Saturday, Kivett noted that GFL has been very responsive to any concerns the county has had and he feels confident they will continue to do so.
We hope he’s right in that assessment, and we see no reason to believe otherwise.
The final test, however, will be in whether GFL will follow the guidelines set out in the proposed agreement.
Those guidelines, we believe, are fair and provide the needed communication that has been missing since the landfill was first expanded. What’s more, we see some of the stipulations as necessary tools to protecting the environment and, again, righting past wrongs that have occurred.
Not all the blame for these problems fall on the shoulders of GFL, but given they purchased the landfill, they have inherited the problems and must find reasonable solutions to fixing them, including a diligence in meeting the proposed stipulations in the agreement.
While eliminating PFAS discharges to surface waters is a no-brainer in the stipulations, as is using drones to help identify emission hot spots and retain a consultant to develop a continuous air pollution monitoring system, just as important, in our estimation, is the community aspects of the agreement.
Those include having GFL establish a community fund to be managed by and for the Snow Hill residents, to include things like county water connections or filters to remove PFAS from drinking water, and holding regular meetings with the community, establishing a complaint response mechanism.
As with everything, communication is key, as is fixing problems that exist.
We see this agreement is having the potential to do both.
Hats off to White-Williamson for her diligent work to get this done. While the work is completed, it is a move in the right direction.