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Court mulls over CDD landfill change


By Dave Taylor

Hancock County magistrates balked at a plan for a local landfill to expand the area from which it can receive construction debris, but tabled the idea until it can examine the county solid waste ordinance.
Todd Thompson, representing L.R. Chapman, attended the meeting to ask for a modification to an existing landfill permit, to add three Indiana counties to the current list of three Kentucky counties.
The permit allows the company to receive construction and demolition debris from Hancock, Breckinridge and Daviess counties, to be dumped in a small landfill, covered up, and eventually reclaimed.
“There’s really no change in any material or anything,” Thompson said. “It should’ve been on the original permit because you can request whatever counties you list and when the girl did it originally she failed to list Perry, Spencer and Warrick.”
Judge-executive Johnny “Chic” Roberts pointed out that the modification appeared to add exponentially to the amount of debris they could take in.
“It says monthly tonnage with Hancock, Breckinridge and Daviess, at about 40 tons total,” he said. “But the new modification request with Spencer, Warrick and Perry looks like 175 total. That’s about a quadruple in request modifications.”
Thompson said he didn’t anticipate it being that much in reality, but he admitted those were the numbers the company had turned in to the state.
Roberts also voiced his concern about trucks hauling debris and potentially dropping stuff on the roadways.
“My concern… is the amount of trash that we do bring in from another state is substantial. We have a really difficult time anyway keeping the roads looking halfway decent. I know they’re supposed to be tarped, but I know how that happens,” he said.
And the county doesn’t get any road haul fee on those trucks, which is a fee trucking companies pay to governments on haul roads, which is used to repair the pavement that’s damaged from constant heavy truck traffic.
The magistrates discussed whether the county is required to approve the modification or whether it just had to ensure that the permit doesn’t conflict with its solid waste ordinance, which the court didn’t have on hand Monday.
Magistrate L.T. Newton summed up his position by saying if it’s non-hazardous the county can benefit in other ways.
“That’s about the only thing that really concerns me, coming out of another state over here,” he said. “It’s also business for one of our big employers here in the county, which I think in the long run we’ll benefit from that through his employees and him paying the occupational tax…”

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