Wide-eyed lawmakers tour toxic waste dump that threatens Lake Marion with leaking chemicals

The bleak landfill that Thomas McElveen always heard about lay before the young senator Friday as he got his first look at the notorious disposal site.

What he saw was a rolling plain that, except for some planted grass and a few circling birds, appeared industrial and lifeless under a cloud-filled sky. The dump’s burial pits were filled in long ago, but beneath the ground lay millions of tons of hazardous waste that had been buried on the property from the late 1970s until the landfill’s owners filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2000.

“Wow!” McElveen, a Sumter Democrat, said of the 279-acre site. “This is massive.”

McElveen, who was two months old when state regulators permitted the dump in 1978, is among a new generation of South Carolina leaders who have been left to deal with the legacy of the aging, toxin-riddled landfill that threatens to contaminate Lake Marion.

The lake, which in one spot is just 750 feet from the dump, is the state’s largest recreational reservoir and a drinking water source to thousands of people. A plastic liner beneath the dump is wearing out, and the state is running low on money to maintain the site.

On Friday, McElveen was among a handful of state officials who toured the old landfill between the rural communities of Rimini and Pinewood, not far from his Sumter home.

The tour, conducted by the site’s acting trustee, was intended to educate state policymakers about the dump and its possible threat to the lake. The idea was to help them with their ultimate decisions on how much money, if any, is needed to oversee the site South Carolina inherited from former dump operator Safety Kleen.

Some who visited the property were wide-eyed as they emerged from vans and looked across the landscape. In addition to the vast areas where old burial pits had been covered over with grass, big industrial buildings were scattered on the property. Those buildings are part of a system that captures poisoned water from the landfill, treats it and sends the rest offsite for disposal. An acrid smell from the treatment process filled the air Friday.

The old burial pits are ringed by monitoring wells installed to detect whether pollution is washing toward the lake in groundwater. Posts marking the wells rise above the surface. Several sections of the landfill pits lie under mounds of earth and plastic, but the oldest section is flat, which is a concern because water can seep in and contribute to the pollution.

“Pretty much all of this was new to me,” said state Sen. Kevin Johnson, a Democrat from Manning who was in high school when the dump opened. “I appreciate the fact that they shared this experience with us, but there are still a lot of unknowns. The scary part is the stuff that is not known.”

Others attending included Lt. Governor Henry McMaster, Sen. Danny Verdin, R-Laurens, Sumter-Lynches Council of Governments chief Michael Mikota and a staff member from Gov. Nikki Haley’s office. All were briefed about issues at the Pinewood landfill before the tour started.

State regulators said the dump hasn’t leaked chemicals into the lake but is showing signs of wear. Problems include toxic gas seeping out of one section, contaminated groundwater atop the site and a plastic liner beneath the oldest section that could be starting to fail, if it has not already. Additionally, plastic covers atop the landfill may not be keeping rainwater out of the oldest section. Contaminated water in part of the dump is on the rise, site trustee Ben Hagood said.

Safety Kleen’s former landfill is a financial headache for South Carolina because funds the company left in its bankruptcy settlement for dump maintenance are almost depleted. And it looks like taxpayers will be saddled with the financial obligation of keeping the landfill from leaking into the 110,000-acre lake near Sumter, state regulators say.

Early estimates indicate the state will have to spend at least $3 million to $4 million annually for parts of the next century to keep the landfill safe, but that’s only for routine maintenance that includes managing toxic water that builds up in the landfill. Even though the dump no longer buries waste, it must be maintained to prevent failures.

It could cost South Carolina another $20 million to make improvements to prevent tainted groundwater from trickling into Lake Marion, the site’s former operator says. One containment wall to prevent leaks to the lake could cost $7 million, landfill managers said Friday.

A consulting report to assess the site’s problems and suggest priorities for maintaining it is expected out later this month, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

McElveen said state regulators and lawmakers in the 1980s and 1990s should have done more to protect Lake Marion. At the very least, they could have insisted that landfill operator Safety Kleen/Laidlaw Environmental Services leave adequate funds to maintain the property. While some Sumter area lawmakers fought the dump from the start – including McElveen’s father, Joe, once a House member, and former Sen. Phil Leventis – most state leaders passed the problem onto the next generation of state policy makers, he said.

Now, McElveen and a new crop of legislators are left to pick up the pieces.

“When you think about the past, you think about the sins of” the past, McElveen said. “But you’ve got to focus more on the front windshield than the rearview mirror. What is the plan going to be moving forward?”

Begun at the site of an old cat litter mine, the Pinewood dump was developed in the 1970s. Landfill operator SCA Services received a state operating permit on April 10, 1978 – just three days after hiring the state’s top regulator for waste management. Overall, SCA hired four DHEC employees in five years to help run the landfill.

Over the years, the landfill changed owners, and in the 1990s, was overseen by Laidlaw Environmental Services. Influential in the Legislature, Laidlaw persuaded the DHEC board in 1995 to drop a requirement that it establish a $133 million cash trust fund to help manage the site one day. Board members have never fully explained what role lawmakers had in prompting them to change their decision on requiring cash.

But Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, said there were relatively few legislators willing to stand up to Laidlaw when the dump was operating during its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. He said the dump never should have opened in the first place because of its proximity to the lake, but having former DHEC employees helped make a difference for the landfill’s operator.

“It was their relationships and their knowledge of permitting that allowed this thing to really get started,” said Neal, who did not attend Friday’s tour. “So it went from that, to an aggressive lobbying effort in the Legislature to (keep the dump running).

“Many legislators were misled about the potential impact of the site. They were told the technology involved in the site would not allow it to ever leak and that was not something they needed to be concerned about – which was all a lie.’’

This story was originally published April 10, 2015 at 10:37 PM with the headline "Wide-eyed lawmakers tour toxic waste dump that threatens Lake Marion with leaking chemicals."