Ralph Reed used to haul trash for the city of Anderson and, in the late 1970s, got the idea of building the Mallard Lake landfill on his property at County Roads 300 East and 300 North. He named his business JM Corp. after his two sons, Jeff and Mark. After all these years, however, the landfill is still just a plan.

Now, after a decades-long legal fight, settlement negotiations are under way between JM and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. The landfill may get the green light. If it does, Reed said two things will happen: It will eventually expand to 160 acres from initial construction on 14 acres and he will sell it.

He needs to recoup $3.5 million he’s spent in legal fees and construction costs at the site. In December 2003, Reed filed personal bankruptcy, but maintains no one has helped pay the legal bills years of litigation have produced. Those costs were covered, he said,

by JM whose assets weren’t affected by his personal financial troubles.

Opponents of the landfill, Killbuck Concerned Citizens Association, wonder aloud how the issue stays alive, but Reed insists “we’ve obeyed all court orders” and rulings have continually favored JM.

Saying he’s been “silent for 27 years and tired of it,” Reed’s attorney, Ron Fowler, who’s represented Reed since the beginning, wanted to clear up misconceptions he says surrounds the proposed landfill site.

“I know legally we’re correct and morally we’re correct,” Fowler said. “I know landfills have been determined to be in the best interests of a community.”

“The county has 200,000 tons of trash a year,” Reed said. He estimates that it costs $1 million a year in tax dollars to take trash to a landfill in another county.

According to Connie Smith, public information officer for Anderson, the city pays Republic Services of Indiana $1.7 million per year to remove residents’ trash. The fee comes out of property taxes.

“There’s a handful of politicians talking about things they don’t know anything about,” said Fowler.

He said, for example, that the landfill would aid economic development because businesses wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get rid of their waste.

Businesses, unlike residents, sign individual contracts with Republic and other services that range from $30 a month for small businesses to $30,000 a month for large ones, according to Kevin Walbridge, regional vice president for Republic.

He said Anderson’s trash is taken to a Wabash landfill after being stored at a transfer station on Columbus Avenue. Other landfills that can be used on a secondary basis are in Fort Wayne, Terre Haute and Winchester.

Reed said the costs to residents and businesses using his landfill would be “significantly less than (what is paid now).”

PHYSICAL LANDFILL

Fowler disputes KCCA assertions that the landfill began as an underground collection and became one above ground through the legal process.

“That’s another lie that’s been taken and run with,” Fowler said. “The (original) ordinance, then and after, only defines one kind (of landfill.) It was presented as a sanitary landfill.”

Reed had pictures from 1991 that showed a large area excavated seven or eight feet down to make way for the landfill. He said the trash’s maximum height would be 60 feet. The Orestes landfill, he said, topped out at 100 feet.

Reed said no landfill in Indiana has been scrutinized as much as Mallard Lake.

“It’s been drilled (for testing of soil and depth of ground water) more than any landfill in the country,” said Fowler.

“The land has proved suitable for a landfill,” said Reed.

There are 14 acres set to become the initial landfill, but Reed said there are 160 acres available and they’ll all be used, a 10-acre section at a time.

“It’ll be 160 acres,” Fowler said.

It’s done by the section, Fowler explained, because of the cost of putting down a leachate collection system and liner.

Reed said he tells people who ask, “I wouldn’t like (living next to the landfill) a damn bit better than you. But it’s got to be someplace.”

Republic’s Walbridge says landfills are expensive to operate and said his company wouldn’t consider building a landfill under 200 acres. He said when Mallard Lake was proposed studies showed there would be a shortage of landfills in the United States. “That didn’t materialize,” he said. He said since then small landfills have given way to larger regional sites. For smaller ones, “there’s no cost benefit.”

KILLBUCK SCHOOL

“There’s a lot of landfills close to schools all over the country,” said Fowler. “(Killbuck School) is not likely to exist. It’s been maintained longer than it should have been.

“Even if it stayed, the landfill would cause less commotion than farming.”

The KCCA warns that buses and trash trucks sharing the same county roads would be hazardous. But most traffic to the landfill, Fowler said, wouldn’t be passing school buses. Reed said landfill hours would be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., so it’s conceivable that the buses and trucks could approach each other. But Fowler notes that school buses pass each other on the road and said that there’s not a lot of difference in the size of a truck and a bus.

Reed said Killbuck is on the outskirts of the Anderson school system.

“I can’t imagine the school being there very long,” said Fowler. “But if it is the landfill won’t interfere with it.”

MUNICIPAL AIRPORT

Fowler said Anderson Municipal Airport probably doesn’t fall under Federal Aviation Administration guidelines for landfill proximity because it doesn’t service commercial airliners. FAA guidelines, however, according to a spokesman, can determine how much federal money is doled out and what restrictions can be put on an airport.

In previous documents provided by Reed, there is a list of Indiana airports, in counties such as Henry, Allen, Hendricks and Lake that have operating landfills within three miles of the airport. Another is the South Side landfill in Marion County, which, Reed said, is within three miles of Indianapolis International Airport. He added that JM Corp. submitted all paperwork to the airport, including a letter in 1996 informing the airport and the FAA of the company’s intention.

“We complied with the law,” Reed said. “They’ve lost no federal funding. There’s no truth to it.”

According to Tony Molinaro, spokesman for the FAA, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, airports can lose federal grants if they don’t make a good faith effort to address possible landfill issues.

“If the airport chose to ignore (the landfill), that could cause problems with grants,” Molinaro said.

Molinaro stated two other concerns for airports near a landfill. If it gets too high, the landfill could present an air space problem. Another problem would be an abundance of birds, drawn to the garbage. Either problem could force FAA restrictions on the airport, said Molinaro, such as what aircraft could land and what routes air traffic could use.

“We don’t have the power to say no to a landfill,” he continued. “This is a city planning process. They need to let us know. Then we can say, ‘If this happens, this is what you can expect.’”

On Feb. 9, 2006, J.R. Builta, attorney for the Board of Aviation Commissioners of the City of Anderson, sent a letter to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, stating, “We ask for your intervention to prevent the inappropriate placement of a landfill so close to our airport.”

WATER

One of the objections presented by the KCCA is that an aquifer under the landfill feeds Anderson’s water system. The KCCA is concerned that water underneath the landfill would be contaminated with leachate due to run off. Fowler disagrees about the aquifer, saying there is none.

“There’s no aquifer of any significance,” said Fowler. “And it does not feed Anderson’s water supply.”

In a study done in 1984 by Samuel Stowe of Ground Water Associates Inc., a Westerville, Ohio, company, and sent to Anderson Mayor Thomas McMahan and the state, 60 percent of Anderson’s water comes from the Ranney Wells, an aquifer of horizontal collector wells along Killbuck Creek and White River. The study said that leachate wouldn’t get into the wells but the wells could be affected by leachate entering Killbuck Creek. The study concluded, however, that because of the final design of the landfill and a monitoring network in place, leachate wouldn’t enter Killbuck Creek to adversely affect water quality. The study, however, was based on a landfill of 13 acres.

In a diagram, Mark Reed, president of JM Corp., showed the liner that would cover the bottom of the landfill, a leachate collection system below that and three feet of solid clay below that. Leachate that reached the collection system would be collected and taken to the water pollution plant, Mark Reed said.

Fowler said the landfill creating water pollution was “poppycock.”

“It won’t pollute, not as much as a farmer putting chemicals on his crops,” said Fowler.

When contacted, Smith, the city’s PIO, said the area was out of city jurisdiction.

“We have to rely on IDEM to investigate fully and determine what’s safe,” she said.

Reed said the settlement between his company and IDEM could be another month away as negotiations continue. Mark Reed said JM has had 26 legal skirmishes and the company has won them all. But the proposed Mallard Lake landfill has always been a hot-button issue.

“No matter what the facts, emotions are what people want to hear,” Fowler said.