News

Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman’s investigation of sediment pollution in the upper Tar River Basin resulted in multiple violations found at Republic Services’ Upper Piedmont Landfill in Rougemont.

On July 19, Katey and Sound Rivers’ intern Eloise MacLean collected water samples and took turbidity readings at several creeks surrounding the landfill. With the exception of one site located upstream of the landfill, every site exceeded the state standard for turbidity. Katey reported her findings to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, known as DEMLR.

“DEMLR’s report says that inspection was done in response to reports of excessively turbid runoff,” Katey said.

Four regulatory violations were found on the landfill property, which is being expanded to construct new cells: land-clearing outside the allowed cutting of tree canopy; a large area of exposed dirt and unprotected slopes in the location dirt is collected to cover layers of garbage in the landfill (called a borrow area, as in “borrowing” dirt from that area); sediment traps and diversion ditches not performing as they should be; and the drainage on the site does not match that shown in plans Republic Services submitted to the state in 2005.

No notices of violation will be issued to the company, however. For Katey, that represents a not-quite success.

“NOVs are not being issued because within the inspection report, the inspector says that damage from sedimentation has not occurred,” Katey said. “We successfully got DEQ on the site to do the inspection and violations have been reported, but it’s not a win because there’s no clear timeline to fix this stuff and DEQ has not admitted that the sediment pollution is actually coming from the landfill.”

The DEMLR sedimentation and construction stormwater inspection report states staff will follow up with another inspection. Katey said she plans to continue monitoring the impacted waterways: two tributaries of Cub Creek in the Tar River basin and Rock Fork Branch in the Neuse River basin.