Lavonia to Close Inert Landfill

By Mark Berryman, WLHR

The Lavonia City Council heard a report by City Manager Charles Cawthon concerning the city’s C&D landfill. According to Cawthon, the EPD is now requiring landfills which only take in inert matter to now be permitted, something that has not been the case in the past.

“As you know, we have a, I guess it’s always been classifed as an inert landfill. That’s the way the state classifies it. Until a couple of years ago, they did not recognize those and did not permit those. Well, that of course changed, and if you want to continue to use it as such it has to be permitted. In consulting with our engineer, it’s going to cost about $100,000 just to get to that point. I told him frankly we were not interested in that, we would just close the landfill and not incur any more expense,” said Cawthon.

Cawthon then told council members permitting the landfill would only end up costing the city money with no way to recover the costs.

“If you went through that whole process the only thing you could take in is construction debris. I don’t see any need in doing that. We have no way to recapture any revenue from doing that. It would just be a dead loss to the city. There are other facilities close by that can take construction debris, so it’s not like citizens and people in the area can’t go other places,” said Cawthon.

Cawthon said closing an inert landfill was much simpler than closing a landfill that takes in other types of waste.

“The closure of the landfill would not be as entailed as the closure of a regular landfill because of the contents of it. Basically, we don’t have to monitor anything. We just cover it up with topsoil and grass and that would be it because there are basically inert things in it,” said Cawthon.

The city manager was then asked about the ability for the city to continue to take leaf and limb debris to the location.

“We’ve got a good bit of pine forest over there. Some of it needs to be thinned. We can scatter the debris from the leaf and limb machines there, just keep spreading it out and let nature take its course. We can do that without any permitting,” said Cawthon.

Council members voted unanimously to close the landfill.