ANDERSON — Even one month before Election Day, campaign signs are hard to find in the front yards along County Road 300 North near Killbuck Elementary School. Instead, there are plenty of signs that read “Stop the Mallard Lake Dump.”
“I have a sign in my yard,” said Sharon Johnson, who has lived east of the school and proposed landfill site for 19 years.
Talks of a landfill going into the vacant field northwest of where 300 North crosses 300 East have been stalled for nearly three decades because of challenges to the required permits. Johnson, 64, said she is unsure what the final outcome of the dispute would be, but a landfill along her street is an upsetting thought.
“It’s just terrible that they’d want to put a landfill out here,” she said. “How are school buses and dump trucks going to get down the road at the same time?”
Ralph Reed, the developer pushing for the landfill, has said he purchased the land in the 1970s because he saw a need for a landfill in Madison County, and that over the years, despite investing about $5 million in the project, that need has not changed.
Aside from the worry that authorities will someday grant Reed permission to open his landfill, Johnson and other residents along County Road 300 North said the area is a peaceful community.
Retired police officer Joel Hobbs, 51, built a home on 300 North 19 years ago. He said he and his family enjoy the rural lifestyle the area just north of Anderson’s city limits provides.
Homes are situated between corn and soybean fields, road traffic is light and geese flying overhead are a regular event, Hobbs said.
There’s also the strange effect the elementary school students have had on his horses over the years.
“I’ve had horses out here that seem to respond every time they hear the children play about one in the afternoon or so,” Hobbs said. “They just seem to soothe the horses. The echoes through the trees behind the school that bounce the children’s voices to this way on 300 are just a very peaceful and quiet enjoyment.”
The horses “just seem to wait for it every day,” he said.
Hobbs is against the landfill, partly because he said it will interfere with the natural beauty of the area. But he worries the Mallard Lake project may be something local residents can’t stop.
“I don’t know if you can worry about those kinds of things,” he said. “A landfill will crop up in the most unlikely of places.”
Residents also fear that a landfill will make their neighborhood famous as a dumping ground instead of as a place for learning.
For most of the year, cars and buses going in and out of Killbuck Elementary can slow down traffic on the narrow road, but Jean Micheal, who lives next door to the school, doesn’t mind.
“The kids are quiet when they’re out playing; the teachers, they’re very considerate, so I have no problem with it,” she said.
Michael said her husband went behind her back 20 years ago when he purchased their 10-acre lot. When she found out they might someday live next door to a landfill, she asked her husband to reconsider, but he believed it was possible the landfill would never be built.
“So we went ahead and bought this land, and built this house, and we’ve been here ever since,” said Michael, who is in her 50s. “And that’s the story of my life.”
With some homes along 300 North already up for sale, Michael said the landfill would only make more people want to leave.
“I think it will eventually go through, but I hope it doesn’t for another 20 or 30 years,” she said. “That way I’ll be gone and won’t have to worry about it.”
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About the series:
Each Monday, The Herald Bulletin is profiling a street in Madison County in our On Your Street series. What’s on the street? Who lives there? What is the history? Those are questions we’ll try to answer. And it’s not just streets. Roads, boulevards and lanes will be included. If you have a street you’d like to nominate for our coverage, let Stephen Dick, assistant managing editor, know. Reach him at The Herald Bulletin, 1133 Jackson St., Anderson 46016 or (765) 640-4863 or steve.dick@heraldbulletin.com.
