Republic's Countywide Landfill Wins Operating Permit

Date: January 5, 2009

Source: News Room

Republic Services won an important victory for its troubled Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility in Pike Township, OH when the Stark County Board of Health approved its 2009 operating permit. The commissioners agreed by a 4-3 vote to allow Republic, owner of the 258-acre landfill, to continue disposing waste into Cells 8B and 8C for another 45 days before the new 22-acre Cell 16 opens. Cell 16 won final Ohio Environmental Protection Agency approval Dec. 31. Last month Republic agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the Ohio EPA to resolve environmental violations there. The company is also funding a $6 million project to construct a firebreak between the landfill's original 88 acres, where the fires and odor problems originated, and the landfill's newer Cell 7. The underground fires having been burning there for two years and are thought to be caused by aluminum dross disposed at the older portion of the site long before Republic assumed control of the facility.

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