ANDERSON — A permit, not a school, is keeping a would-be landfill from accepting the county’s trash.
Developer Ralph Reed said closing Killbuck Elementary, which sits just east of his proposed landfill site north of the city, would have no impact on the project he’s been working on for 30 years.
Instead, Reed said legal disputes are keeping him from gaining a permit, but he said that final hurdle could be crossed by the end of the year.
After Anderson Community Schools announced in November that a $5 million budget shortfall may force the district to close schools, some Killbuck parents voiced concern that closing the school would be a green light for Reed’s Mallard Lake landfill.
“The landfill is going in whether the school closes or not,” Reed said. “That’s what these people can’t get through their heads.”
While landfills are required to be at least 2,500 feet from schools, Reed said, Mallard Lake is not affected by the law because of a grandfather clause.
What is holding up the landfill, however, is an Indiana law passed last year that required landfills zoned more than two decades ago but never opened before April 1, 2008, to seek a fresh review by local authorities.
The Killbuck Concerned Citizens Association, a local group opposed to the landfill, filed a lawsuit in June seeking declaratory judgment that Reed’s company, J.M. Corp., must adhere to the stipulation that landfills be located at least half a mile from schools. Madison County Superior Court Judge Dennis Carroll granted a request for a change of venue to Hamilton County, but no hearings are scheduled.
KCCA Chairman Bill Kutschera said be believes Reed or someone involved in the Mallard Lake project is pressuring Anderson Community Schools to close Killbuck Elementary.
At a public workshop in December about the school district’s budget crisis, Kutschera said a school board member had approached him to say that an attorney for Reed was offering funding for a new school if ACS closes Killbuck.
In a phone interview Friday, Kutschera would not identify the school board member.
Board President Teddy Bohnenkamp said she has not spoken with anyone about the landfill project. The school system is opposed to the project, she said, but the final decision will come from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Reed and his attorney, Ronald Fowler, said they had not recently spoken to anyone in the school system. Fowler said he has spoken to school officials before about the possibility of purchasing the Killbuck site if the school ever closed.
The school’s location and age make it a good candidate for closing, Fowler said.
“If that school needs to close then close it, and stop using it as a political pawn in the landfill dispute,” he said.
Local Business
Developer says school a non-issue for landfill
Permit not contingent on Killbuck’s future
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