By WILLIAM KUTSCHERA
The last thing that the residents of Madison County need is to take another economic and environmental “hit” but that’s exactly what we’re about to experience unless we take a stand and make our collective voices heard in protest against the impending construction of the Mallard Lake landfill at the intersection of 300 East and 300 North directly across from Killbuck Elementary School.
Despite IDEM’s denial of a request for renewal of a lapsed operating permit to the proposed operator, JM Corporation, Catherine Gibbs, Indiana environmental law judge, granted a questionable exception to JM and has cleared the way for the landfill construction to proceed. The facts surrounding the court’s decision in light of IDEM’s permit denial are suspect, at best, and need to be reviewed so the facts can be presented in a legal challenge.
Despite the tireless efforts of Helen Wean and the other members of the Killbuck Concerned Citizens Association to prevent the approval of this landfill, as it stands now, the landfill operator, JM Corporation, was able to persuade the courts to ignore the negative ecological impacts on our citizens as well as the regulations covering IDEM permit application limits. Among the negative impacts on the county would be the pollution of the aquifer that supplies most Killbuck and Meadow Woods homes, rendering their wells useless except for providing water for flushing toilets.
The FAA has confirmed that the proximity of the landfill to the Madison County Airport will result in the loss of federal funds to the county airport. Furthermore, the roads serving the proposed landfill are not adequate to handle the increase truck traffic and will require road improvements, the cost of which will far exceed the income to the country from the landfill operation.
A possibly final meeting of the KCCA and Meadow Woods homeowners will be at Killbuck Elementary School at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9. Regardless of where you live in the county, resolve to be there so that we can show our county commissioners (and those campaigning for the upcoming election) that we are not going to sit back and let the quality of our environment be damaged by a landfill that should never have been approved in the first place. Let’s make the floors at the school creak under our weight. The only thing that can save our county from another environmental and economic “hit” is to tell the commissioners and the judges that, “Enough is enough! Do your jobs or be replaced.”
William Kutschera is an Anderson resident.
