A Summit County landfill for construction debris is polluting Barberton’s drinking-water wells.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has been aware of the problem with iron and manganese in Barberton’s backup water supply for years, but it took no action until March 4.
The state agency ordered the owner of the Summit & McCoy C&D Landfill off McCoy Road in Norton to determine the extent of the pollution at Barberton’s well field in Norton and to correct the problem.
In 2011 and again in 2013, EPA staffers recommended that the agency order the landfill owner to investigate the pollution problem. The pollution was cited in a 2014 state report and in another last July. The site was deemed one of the state’s top priorities, but the plan to force the owner to evaluate the problem did not win approval from Ohio EPA higher-ups until recently, according to records reviewed by the Beacon Journal.
The EPA, in a recent internal email, called the landfill and nearby well field “a complicated site with challenging issues.”
The pollution problems with Barberton’s backup water supply are coming to light as the Ohio EPA faces intense scrutiny over its efforts to protect drinking water following the lead problems revealed earlier this year in the village of Sebring in Mahoning County.
The Ohio Environmental Council is unhappy with the Norton problem and the fact that EPA was aware of the issue but didn’t take action for years, said Kristy Meyer, spokeswoman for the advocacy group.
“No Ohioans should have to worry about the quality of their drinking water,” she said.
Her group intends to review EPA records “to get to the bottom of this and we will hold people accountable,” she said.
Safe to drink
The Barberton well water is safe to drink and is still used when needed, Barberton spokesman Terry Palmer said. There are no restrictions on its use.
The EPA and Summit County Public Health are starting to look into whether the landfill pollution is affecting neighbors who rely on wells for their drinking water.
There are no federal limits for iron and manganese in drinking water. They are not considered a major health threat. The U.S. EPA has issued secondary advisory-only levels for both pollutants because they can affect taste and color — aesthetic rather than health concerns.
Iron and manganese can occur naturally but materials in construction landfills can increase levels of both metals.
The state action against the landfill’s owner, Summit Road Properties, came after the Beacon Journal asked on Feb. 19 to review EPA documents on Barberton’s drinking water. A similar request was filed by the Ohio Environmental Council, a statewide eco-group. The agency on March 11 released initial documents: nearly 730 pages.
The Beacon Journal also reviewed extensive files on the landfill at Summit County Public Health, the agency that oversees the landfill along with the state EPA.
In a 13-page memo dated Sept. 14, 2011, Ohio EPA hydro-geologist Jeff Rizzo in the Twinsburg regional office urged the agency to expand its investigation of the Norton pollution problem by ordering a groundwater assessment by filing findings and orders from the agency’s director. That did not happen until this month.
In a second memo in April 2013, Rizzo said EPA staffers had “additional issues of concern” about the landfill.
Quality affected
The latest tests showed that the landfill “is impacting groundwater quality within the shallow hydrostatigraphic unit by current and historical operations at the property,” he wrote in the memo.
Rizzo said he wanted the Ohio EPA director to order the groundwater assessment. Again, that did not happen.
In early 2014, the EPA concluded in a report that the Norton landfill was a pollution source for nearby well fields owned by Barberton and used as a backup water supply for 29,000 people in Barberton, Norton and Coventry Township.
In late 2014, the company agreed there were releases to the groundwater but said they did not create major problems.
EPA spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer said the agency has been limited in its ability to deal with the Barberton well pollution.
There was no health threat from the pollution and Barberton mitigated the problem by pumping the well water into the reservoir that serves as the city’s main water supply, diluting the iron and manganese, she said. As a result, there was no drinking-water problem and no violations that could trigger state action.
Barberton could have been cited for iron and manganese violations if it had pumped the well water straight into the water plant, not into the reservoir. Its water plant cannot effectively treat the high levels of iron and manganese from the wells, the EPA said.
Taste and quality
Iron and manganese affect the taste and clarity of drinking water and are governed by nonbinding secondary federal limits that are recommendations only, she said.
For those reasons, the agency was unsure it could order Summit Road Properties to do more than a groundwater assessment, agency staffer Teri Finfrock said in a March 3 email.
The agency expects the company to fight the orders, she said. She added: “However, we are going to test our authority and require remediation. If the company appeals, we’ll fight it.”
The agency, she said in another email, considers the pollution to be “a serious matter that needs to addressed immediately.”
Landfill owner Steve Bennett declined to comment on the EPA orders.
In a 15-page filing March 4, Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler ordered the company to conduct a groundwater assessment and fix the problem because the EPA is convinced that the landfill is “affecting ground water quality,” the agency said.
Under the state order, the company must reimburse Barberton for extra costs incurred to treat the groundwater to remove the iron and manganese. Corrective actions could include the company being forced to drill new drinking water wells for Barberton.
Nine new monitoring wells have been ordered around the 34.6-acre landfill to gauge the groundwater pollution. Ohio could pay a portion of that cost from a special fund but most would be paid by Summit Road Properties Inc.
Ohio has a fund to deal with water pollution around construction landfills. A fee of 10 cents per ton is charged with 2 cents going to local health departments and 8 cents to the EPA for water problems.
Concerns for decades
Barberton and the county health department expressed concerns about the landfill’s threat to the city’s wells as far back as 1997.
But Barberton is not troubled by the delays in getting the Ohio EPA director to issue findings and orders against the landfill company to begin the assessment, said Palmer, the city’s spokesman.
Such a delay in acting by the EPA is “part of the process and it doesn’t bother us,” Palmer said. “The EPA has done a great job and we’ve got no complaints.”
The landfill doesn’t accept household trash but does handle building materials and concrete from demolished buildings, highway projects and other infrastructure work.
Testing in 2015 showed iron levels of up to 10.15 parts per billion in monitoring wells around the landfill. The federal advisory limit is 0.3 parts per billion. Those test results were consistent with previous iron test results, the records show.
For manganese, the highest level in the monitoring wells in 2015 was 1.437 parts per billion. The federal advisory level is 0.05 parts per billion.
Manganese can tint the water red and color laundered clothes.
Total dissolved solids were also an issue in the 2015 tests, the records say. Levels were as high as 1,400 parts per billion. The federal advisory level is 500 parts per billion. The dissolved minerals, salts and metals that can affect water taste.
Two of three drinking-water wells that Barberton uses as a backup water supply are affected.
Barberton’s main water source is Barberton Reservoir, a 200-acre reservoir on Wolf Creek in Norton and Copley Township. It can store up to 670 million gallons of water and Barberton typically uses 4½ million gallons per day.
The three municipal wells together can produce 4 million gallons of drinking water per day, Palmer said.
The wells are typically used in the late summer and early fall when the water supply in the reservoir has dropped, he said.
The water from the wells is pumped north about 3 miles and released into the reservoir near Barberton’s water treatment plant off Summit Road north of Wadsworth Road, he said.
Landfill history
The C&D landfill was constructed in what had been an old sand and gravel mining area that dates back to the 1940s and 1950s. Summit Road Properties purchased the landfill in 1988, according to records.
The property includes a landfill area that is capped and covered and no longer accepting waste and another still-active area. Both are located on the north side of McCoy Road and just west of the old Rolling Acres Mall and the Akron-Norton border.
Barberton’s three wells, drilled between 1953 and 1961, are near the intersection of Summit and McCoy roads in Norton. The wells, at depths from 101 to 137 feet, are within 250 yards to 900 yards of the landfill.
The wells along Wolf and Pigeon creeks are down gradient from the landfill and within the path of the west-flowing ground water, reports show. Pollution from the landfill can reach the wells within one year.
When the Barberton wells are pumping, polluted water is actually drawn toward the wells at a faster rate, EPA documents show.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.