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Council to Vote on Replacing Upper Marlboro Landfill With Transfer Station
Council Chairman Samuel H. Dean said he likely will vote for the Route 301 site for the transfer station.
(By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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Still, some residents said they don't think the study involved as much community comment as advertised. Notices ran in newspapers before public meetings, but many said they had no idea the process was underway until they were alerted by letter to a final public hearing, held last week. The letter was sent to property owners who live within two miles of the site.
"We're getting railroaded into this site," said Jacqui Hayes.
They said they sympathize with residents like Mack but think the site of the current landfill could accommodate the less-intrusive transfer station, which would confine the environmental impact to an area that has already been compromised.
"It's outrageous that they've spent millions since the 1960s trying to preserve a greenway by the [Patuxent] river, and now we're going to put a trash-transfer site there," said Fred Tutman, riverkeeper of the Patuxent, which flows near the proposed trash-transfer station. "It seems like a very discordant use."
Officials with the county's Environmental Resources Department refused to provide basic information about the existing landfill, including how many acres of the county-owned site are devoted to the landfill and how many are unused. Carol Terry, a spokeswoman for the department, said the department's director had decided no public information could be provided because of the pending council decision.
The council is scheduled to vote tomorrow to formally amend the county's 10-year solid-waste plan to include the new transfer station. If County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) does not object, the county would then seek state permits to move forward, a process that could take several years.
Charles Renninger, who was the chairman of a county-appointed Environmental Justice Task Force, said his group toured trash-transfer stations in other counties and found there was little smell or litter. He said it is unfair to continue putting all the county's garbage at Brown Station Road, noting other less-than-desirable projects that are in the same area, including construction rubble dumps and the county jail.
"The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to deal with this issue," he said.
"The trash is going to have to go someplace."
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