EPA orders landfill at Sunrise secured

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 9:58 a.m.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that Clark County and the company that operated the Sunrise Mountain landfill are in violation of a federal order that governs the capping of buried waste.

The county and Republic Services of Southern Nevada have been ordered to secure the landfill.

The 11-page EPA order sent Jan. 18 says the county and the company failed to complete required studies, used unauthorized data collection methods and misrepresented laboratory and field information in an attempt to demonstrate existing soils would meet EPA rules.

The EPA found "significant and substantive deviations from requirements," said Heidi Hall, manager of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Solid Waste in San Francisco.

"We will comply," said Alan Pinkerton of the county's Comprehensive Planning Department said.

The EPA became involved after a Sept. 11, 1998, thunderstorm tore open the cap covering 760 acres of buried waste, some of which filtered into Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major drinking water supply.

The county had planned to purchase the land atop Sunrise Mountain, site of the landfill, from the Bureau of Land Management, but the EPA's cleanup order has delayed that effort.

Republic accepted full responsibility for the cleanup as part of a $36 million, 15-year contract extension for local garbage collection.

The site was closed to municipal dumping in 1993, but officials discovered that a clay cap covering the dump had been improperly installed. Methane gas billowed out of cracks, one as long as 100 feet long. Federal and local officials also feared contamination from the decaying trash would enter Lake Mead.

The September 1998 flood sent tons of waste into the Southern Nevada's drinking water supply, resulting in the the federal order to clean up the site.

However, the work "is a challenge," Pinkerton said. "There are issues that weren't thought about 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even five years ago."