Board Of Health Weighs Next Steps For Landfill Issue

Director of Public Health Wayne Attridge told the Board of Health last week that one option for "moving ahead" to solve the town's landfill problem is to seek out less costly solutions to keep from closing the landfill and trash transfer station altogether.

That could mean redesigning the proposed multi-level cap, which would have sealed the decades of trash buried at the site, he said. All design work on the proposed trash transfer station has been stopped.

The voters rejected the health department's proposal to spend $22 million to cap the contaminated landfill and build a new transfer station. Marblehead's trash is sorted at the station and trucked to a disposal facility in Saugus at a cost of $95 a ton. The town generates about 10,000 tons of trash per year.

Attridge has been meeting with his consultants, including SEA Consultants, which helped design the proposed cap, to develop options for the landfill, he said.   

The proposed landfill cap was to have several levels of gravel, a rubber membrane and then be topped with asphalt to keep rainwater from seeping through the trash and carrying contaminants into the soil or a stream that crosses the landfill. 

A priority for Attridge is to: "keep it [the contaminants] out of that stream."

The department has enough money, about $114,600 in the budget this year, to continue monitoring the pollutants in the landfill. The Department of Environmental Protection is closely watching the Marblehead landfill.   
"We can't put a shovel in the ground without a permit from DEP," Attridge said recently.  

There are no health issues posed by the site, although the site is contaminated, he said.

In the past, the 17.5-acre site had open pit burning and incinerated its own trash, spewing ash over the property, until the federal Clean Air Act of 1975 put an end to that practice, Attridge said.

The next step is for the Board of Health to select a committee to review all the options that the engineers and consultants propose within the limited budget.

The Board of Health will appoint a building committee to oversee the redesign of the landfill cap and transfer options. The committee will include at least three people. Attridge and Town Planner Becky Curran will also serve as ex officio members of the committee.

Jeff Dinsmore, who owns a home near the landfill at 57 Stony Brook Road, attended the meeting, but did not comment. The voters rejected the town's plan to purchase his home for $899, 950 because his property is contaminated by the years of landfill operations.

Attridge called Dinsmore "an innocent party" and the town has a liability to buy the house, but has no funds to do so.