PALMER -- The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has for the third time rejected a contentious construction and demolition landfill on 35 acres along the Glenn Highway near Palmer.
The borough's Board of Adjustment and Appeals on Tuesday upheld the borough planning commission's December denial of a permit sought by Anchorage-based Central Monofill Services. The planning commission denied an earlier conditional-use permit application for the same facility in 2013.
Central hopes to defray rising landfill disposal costs with monofills in Palmer and Chugiak. Company officials continue to say the facility will be well-regulated and safe. But starting in 2013 when the monofill was proposed, hundreds of nearby residents rose up against the prospect of a 160-foot pile of building waste sitting atop a notoriously unpredictable water table in the lake-studded gateway to Palmer.
The unanimous board decision by four of the board's five members -- one was absent -- came late Tuesday afternoon after three hours of testimony followed by three hours of closed-door deliberations.
Just a handful of the original 75 audience members scrambled back to the borough assembly chambers in time for the decision.
"We're thrilled," said Robin Bumgardner, who lives near the proposed monofill site.
Saying it lacked jurisdiction to do so, the board declined to take up Central's complaints regarding the recusal of planning commissioner Bill Kendig before December's vote. Kendig had to recuse himself because of recent business dealings with Central.The board also didn't address Central's appeal regarding another commissioner, Tom Healy, an employee of the City of Palmer, which publicly opposed the monofill. Healy voted against the permit.
Central has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the decision to Palmer Superior Court.
Bill Ingaldson, the Palmer attorney representing the company, said after the decision that Central hadn't decided about an appeal.
Ingaldson wondered if the board had time to digest all the materials -- 3,300 pages in the record, 30- or 40-page briefs from the borough and Central -- before coming to a decision.
He said Central, lacking an affordable waste disposal site, could start losing recycling bids.
"It may be a happy day for the people that live there but in a way it's sort of a sad day for recycling in Alaska," Ingaldson said.
The "Central companies" -- the same owners also operate Central Environmental Services and Central Recycling Services -- sell steel, crushed asphalt, concrete and glass to Seattle and Alaska markets from a bustling industrial site at Ship Creek. The Anchorage landfill gets what they can't sell -- carpet, sheetrock, drywall and the like -- but company officials say unfair prices triggered their monofill site search.
Monofills, unlike traditional landfills, are considered low risk to air and water and are not required to include liners or monitoring wells in Alaska. They tend to contain one type of waste -- in this case, construction and demolition. But studies in other states -- monofill critics here point to one from Ohio -- indicate the fills bring potential contamination from chemicals including lead, arsenic and benzene. Central says the Palmer facility would be too different to compare.
At Palmer, Central sought a borough permit to dump up to 25,000 tons a year of "inert" shredded waste as well as 10,000 tons of regulated asbestos-containing material, 5,000 of it requiring special protections. Materials would come from Valley building demolitions, as well as the Ship Creek recycling site.
The planning commission in 2013 voted 4-3 against the monofill, citing concerns about windblown garbage and groundwater contamination. Central submitted a new application last year. Based partly on new hydrology reports, borough planning staff recommended permit approval but with 40 conditions including monitoring wells, debris-catching fences and a 162-foot height limit.
The permit failed with that 3-3 vote. Central, immediately protesting Kendig's recusal, appealed the commission's decision to the five-member Board of Appeals.
Two dozen people, most nearby residents, testified during Tuesday's hearing. All but one urged the board to uphold the planning commission's permit denial.
A borough-contracted hydrologist found the monofill could foul wells up to a mile away, Stephanie Figon testified, saying she lives within about 1,000 feet of the site. Others testified about the possibility of rotting drywall creating hydrogen sulfide gas releases.
"If you overturn this decision, you're saying I just shouldn't be worried about that, that my property values aren't going to go down," Figon said. "That's ridiculous. I'll move out of my house if this project goes through."
Even the borough planning staffer who last year recommended permit approval on Tuesday urged the appeals board not to overturn the commission's decision. Borough development services manager Alex Strawn said a Federal Emergency Management Agency report lists monofills among the disposal sites subject to fires and described the "wild fluctuations" of the local water table resulting from a former gravel operator's puncturing the aquifer on the site.
Central officials say they don't plan to install a liner because that would block the flow of water through the fill. But the company contends that other protections such as compaction, sloping, a cap of shredded material and the area's relatively low rainfall will protect local groundwater. The last claim drew some grumbling and head-shaking from the crowd.
The company is required to keep the edge of the monofill at least 10 feet from the closest groundwater, Ingaldson said.
Before deliberations began, he told the board that the planning commission's December tie vote meant board members "don't have to defer to anyone" and could make their own decision about the monofill permit.
The only issue the decision boiled down to is whether the monofill will harm the water, Ingaldson said.
Four engineering firms concluded "there's not a realistic danger to the well water and that substantial evidence does not support any denial," he said.
But the borough's deputy attorney, John Aschenbrenner, advised the board that borough code and court precedent direct the board to weigh only the planning commission's decision and whether the evidence backing it up was substantial. "It is difficult to try to surmise how you could reach a decision that it wasn't," Aschenbrenner told them.
The Chugiak site is on hold due to adjacent contamination from an old landfill. Both sites still need approval from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.