These problems are not hidden in the corner of someone’s decrepit farm, but rather in the Broad Run Farms development in Sterling. An old landfill that has been closed for decades continues to be a trouble the residents of this quiet community, polluting their water and endangering their health.
The Hidden Lane Landfill, consisting of about 35 acres of a 147-acre property, is located ¾ of a mile north of Route 7 in Sterling, sandwiched between the subdivisions of Broad Run Farms and CountrySide. In 2000, there were almost 7,600 people living within a one-mile radius of the old landfill.
The landfill is also adjacent to the floodplain of the Potomac River—the water source for many northern Virginia residents.
Former Board of Supervisors vice chairman Bruce Tulloch (R-Potomac) told the Leesburg Today on September 18, 2007 that the Hidden Lane Landfill posed a threat to “not only residents living nearby, but also could contaminate the region’s drinking water if high levels of contamination reach the Potomac River upriver of the Fairfax County water intake that provides much of the water for Eastern Loudoun residents.”
Today, the federal government has intervened and is taking control of the clean-up operations, but residents are unlikely to see drastic changes anytime soon.
A Short History of the Hidden Lane Landfill
Operation of the landfill began in May 1971, when owners Philip Smith and Albert Moran received a conditional permit from the Commonwealth of Virginia to operate a landfill for construction debris. This consisted of tree stumps, concrete and demolition debris. The landfill reportedly also accepted other materials, including hazardous materials. Many 55-gallon drums of herbicides and pesticides have been seen at the landfill over time.
The landfill was largely unregulated, as it was a private landfill, not operated by the county or state. At the time that operation began, very few regulations were in place for any landfill, but even fewer for private ones. According the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), the landfill remains unregulated because it closed prior to the 1988 adoption of sanitary landfill regulations. One of the biggest consequences of this lack of regulation is that the landfill has never had a liner between the ground and the refuse, allowing chemicals and decaying composition to seep into the ground.
From the beginning, many officials on the county level were opposed to the Hidden Lane landfill and tried to stop its operation. They filed court proceeding after court proceeding, trying to get the permit revoked by the state.
“The county doesn’t regulate private landfills,” said John Sandy, deputy county administrator. “Our powers have to be expressly authorized by the General Assembly. We cannot get into activities unless the state says we can do that as a locality. When it came to a private landfill, what we did and what staff did in the 70s and early 80s, we went to court about our concern about the landfill, our concern about what was being dumped there and tried to get the state to pull the permit.”
In April 1973, at request of the Board of Supervisors, the Commonwealth’s Attorney issued an opinion that the Hidden Lane Landfill was a violation of the Zoning and Refuse Disposal Ordinances and constitutes a public nuisance.
This effort was to no avail. Smith and Moran were acquitted by the Loudoun County Circuit Court of operating a public nuisance on December 4, 1973. Operation of the landfill continued for years and the landfill wasn’t officially closed until October 4, 1983, when trial judge William Shore Robertson granted the county a permanent injunction against Smith and Moran, and their operation of the Hidden Lane Landfill.
Following years of complaints from residents and county officials about fires, noise, traffic, dust and safety, the landfill was ordered to be closed and sealed with a two-foot clay cap.
Dangerous Ground
Although the landfill has been officially closed for decades, its presence still affects the neighboring communities. Residents in the nearby Broad Run Farm subdivision have detected a chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, in their water. Many of the homes found TCE at a level higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level, or MCL.
While the EPA’s drinking water standard for TCE is 5 parts per billion (ppb), the levels detected in the private wells at Broad Run Farms ran as high as 110 ppb, more than 20 times the acceptable level. The EPA has classified TCE as a “probable human carcinogen.”
Concerned about the safety of Broad Run Farms residents, the Loudoun County Health Department decided to provide bottled water to the homes with TCE contamination in 2005, until a more permanent solution could be worked out.
“The Board was very interested in getting people bottled water, and the County began giving people bottled water immediately,” Sandy said.
DEQ soon picked up the lead and decided to provide homes with TCE contamination with whole-house carbon filtration units, which attach between the ground and the house and filter any water coming into the house. DEQ also committed to providing maintenance on the units through July 2007. The carbon filtration systems act as “a sort of chemical magnet,” said a DEQ fact sheet. “As the contaminated well water flows through the system, the contaminants attach to the surface of the activated carbon, purifying the drinking water.”
Five residents had procured their own carbon filtration units before DEQ intervened, and the state decided to reimburse those residents up to $3,000 for each home with a filtration system in place. Some residents had paid as much as $6,800 for their units and related products, but were not reimbursed in full.
The neighboring Countryside subdivision did not face contamination from TCE because the development runs on municipal water taken from eastern Loudoun's Beaverdam Reservoir, approximately eight miles upstream of the landfill.
However, Countryside was not without its own problems resulting from proximity to the Hidden Lane Landfill. Residents of the subdivision have called the fire department to report smells indicating a methane gas leak, which officials attributed to the landfill.
The potential dangers were so high that Loudoun County officials, along with officials at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, contacted the EPA to get the Hidden Lane Landfill listed as one of the agency’s Superfund sites.
Superfund is the federal government’s environmental program for cleaning up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites across the nation. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980, a law enacted after the discovery of Love Canal in the 1970s, funds the Superfund program. The law permits the EPA to clean up qualifying sites and requires responsible parties to either perform the clean-up or reimburse the government for the EPA’s clean-up actions.
“The Superfund program is the only viable source of sufficient funding, with estimated costs in the millions of dollars, to bring about a permanent solution to the problems caused by the landfill,” said members of the Broad Run Farms Civic Association while trying to get the site listed.
Officials had attempted to get the site listed on the Superfund National Priority List (NPL) originally in 1983 but the EPA found that the contamination was not severe or widespread enough to qualify.
The landfill was archived from the CERCLA inventory in January 1996 because “the Property, while contaminated, did not require any federal Superfund response action,” the decision said. The EPA decided that the small amount of contamination at the Hidden Lane Landfill “does not pose a threat to human health or environment under Superfund…The EPA anticipates no need to take further Superfund enforcement, investigatory, or cleanup action,” the decision continued.
“They [EPA] denied our requests for this consideration years ago, and now it’s coming back to haunt them,” Supervisor Jim Clem (R-Leesburg) said in September 2007.
Following another wave of TCE contamination in 2005, county and state officials tried again to get the Hidden Lane Landfill on the EPA’s National Priority List. This time around, they were more successful. The EPA proposed the Hidden Lane Landfill for the National Priority List in September 2007 and successfully added it to the list in March 2008.
Now that the landfill has qualified for the Superfund program, the EPA has taken control of the clean-up process, with the help of county and state departments. Yet even as a qualified Superfund site, EPA officials predict that it could take at least a decade to clean up the Hidden Lane Landfill. The agency is currently working on an investigation to determine the extent of the contamination, as well as the human health and environmental hazards associated with the landfill.
Over the next several weeks, "The Hidden Truth on Hidden Lane" series will examine into the history of the landfill and its major problems; will investigate TCE, exposure to the chemical and the health issues that accompany it; will examine the interactions on the county, state and federal levels in addressing the problems; will address the community’s concerns and reactions; and will examine the process of qualifying for the Superfund program and the road map for cleaning up the landfill.
You can also follow the story online at Loudouni.com.
Unfortunately, chemicals from old dumpsites have contaminated drinking water in communities across the country. Thank you Dorry Samuels for the excellent article.