More News

Rockville residents who raised concern about a seeping landfill off Gude Drive told Montgomery officials they are not satisfied with the county's efforts to mitigate the pollution, but the officials say they are doing their best to find a solution.

"Let's get to the part where you take it very seriously and are going to fix it," Keith Ligon, a member of Gude Landfill Concerned Citizens, said at a meeting last week.

Robert Hoyt, the county's Department of Environmental Protection chief, said the county is working to "submit an approach and schedule of remediation to the Maryland Department of the Environment by April 30."

A monitoring plan is due by March 30, Hoyt said.

Hoyt, Peter Karasik of the county Division of Solid Waste Services and David Lake of the county Department of Environmental Protection agreed with Gude Landfill Concerned Citizens that the landfill, which operated from 1964 until 1982 before laws regulated landfill safety, is contaminating the surrounding environment.

"We're not saying there isn't contamination coming out, because there is," Hoyt said.

His goal, he said, is to find a solution that satisfies the concerns of the residents.

The more than 100-acre landfill is leaching chemicals like cyanide, lead, mercury, benzene and more into the surrounding soil and groundwater, many at levels above the maximum allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a recent county report that indicates that water sampling data taken from a ring of wells around the landfill between 2001 and September 2008 contains levels of several chemicals beyond what federal law allows.

Hoyt emphasized that residents in the Derwood Station neighborhood, which borders the site to the northwest and is the nearest residential area to the landfill, use municipal water, which is unaffected by contaminated groundwater.

Methane gas also escapes from the landfill and homes in the Derwood Station neighborhood, where most members of Gude Landfill Concerned Citizens live, have installed methane monitoring devices.

Hoyt said that none of the monitoring devices has ever recorded a dangerous level of methane, other than one false alarm several years ago.

The Maryland Department of the Environment is now becoming involved in helping to mitigate the environmental impact of the landfill.

"This is a new role for the state to play," Hoyt said. "They've never in the past thought about addressing leachate from landfills like this one that predate regulation."

Leachate is contaminated water that oozes from the soil surrounding landfills. Most landfills experience the problem, but especially those that predate safety regulations, such as the Gude Landfill, county officials said.

Hoyt served as deputy secretary of the state Department of the Environment for four years before coming to Montgomery County to serve as head of the Department of Environmental Protection.

Dean Dosier, a geologist, landfill emergency manager and member of Gude Landfill Concerned Citizens, thinks a satisfactory solution is attainable and meeting with the county officials was a step in the right direction.

"It establishes a dialogue the community needed to have with DEP," he said. "To have that dialogue in this forum was beneficial, cooperative."

Possible mitigation efforts include a gas-to-energy plant on the site, which is built and scheduled to begin operation within the next few months, and a clay or synthetic cap that meets modern standards being placed on the landfill, Hoyt said.

"It's clear they're reacting to the pressure MDE has brought on them," Ligon said of the county officials. "They've known about the problem for years. They've got a confidence factor to fill in here. There's a lack of trust and confidence."

Hoyt said the county has a "great working relationship" with the state, but he does not feel pressure to find a solution to the Gude Landfill issue just because of the state's involvement.

"Yeah, we're stepping up our efforts, but it's not because the state is making us do anything," Hoyt said.

"It's not a situation of ‘we're being forced into it.' At the same time, the citizens are doing a great job of bringing the issue to the forefront. I don't want it to seem like we're coming along kicking and screaming. We're not."