St. Martinville – Several Cade residents turned out Thursday evening to voice their opposition to a major modification of the permit for the Greenpoint Landfill solid waste disposal facility on Old Spanish Highway.
Nearby residents complained of the smell, dust and debris in the air, and concerns about effects the landfill has on their quality of life, property values and groundwater contamination. Cade resident David Pugh said the facility, which opened in 1997, has had violations from 1998 that continue to this day.
“They’ve had 26 years to do this right,” said Pugh. “It might be a hard job to do, but they’re still not getting it right.
“Why would we want to give them two more years or three more years or five more years?”
“The bottom line, the citizens want to cease operations in this facility,” said Howard Rattliff Jr., who owns property with his wife adjacent to the landfill. “We’re okay with the system, the operation with the current permitting. Once that is reached, close this facility down. That’s the right thing to do. That’s the right decision to make.”
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality held a public hearing seeking public comment on the issue at the St. Martin Parish Government Annex Building, with a representative of Greenpoint Landfill speaking first to explain the company’s request for a major modification to its permit.
Greenpoint is looking to modify its existing Type III Landfill by a lateral and vertical expansion, reducing the frequency of interim cover placement and revising the final cover slope.
Type III Landfills are for disposing or processing of construction/ demolition debris or woodwaste, composting organic waste to produce a usable material, or separating recyclable wastes.
Public officials, residents living within two miles of the facility, people working within two miles of the facility,, and parish residents were then given the chance to comment as the DEQ hearing was seeking to gather facts and information before deciding whether to issue the modification to the permit.
Landfill
Greenpoint General Manager Sean Day said that since taking over operation of the facility in December 2021, vast improvements have been made to the way the facility is run.
“We knew that there were some concerns with the landfill,” Day said.
Day said that the expansion will take place within the current footprint of the landfill and that the area that is being expanded into was in the 2005 permit but was not included when the permit was reissued in 2013.
Some changes in elevation will be included because the slope is moving from the current area to include the new area at the back of the 3.5 acres.
Greenpoint is asking DEQ to allow it to change the interim cover from 14 days to 30 days. The site must cover the waste it adds to the landfill with soil after 14 days, and the company would like to be able to do that after 30 days because covering it every 14 days uses too much soil.
“What we’re trying to repermit was permitted at one point,” Day said.
“I know there’s been a lot of concerns with the landfill. We took it over the 12th month of ’21, We haven’t had any violations or problems. There’s been some infractions that have to do with erosion or incidentals.”
Incidentals are items that are not permitted for disposal as construction debris, such as basketballs, plastic buckets or other items that are in the dumpsters brought to the site. Workers separate those items to be hauled away for disposal at other landfills, but sometimes they are missed, Day said.
“We haul out tons and tons of incidentals,” he said. “We can’t get them all, I guess. We do our best to get them all out.”
He also said there is erosion every time it rains, and as soon as it dries the company takes care of that.
Dust is another concern, and Day said the company waters the debris several times a day to try to combat that. Agriculture around the area also contributes to dust in the air, he said.
“Do we make dust? I’m sure we do, but we do our best to contain it to the site,” Day said.
Day said that the clay layer beneath the landfill should prevent any contamination of the aquifer.
Day said he is trying to extend the life of the landfill, because the company takes in construction and demolition debris from St. Martin Parish, and is necessary if there is a big event such as a hurricane that damages homes and businesses in the parish.
St. Martin Parish Councilwoman Carla JeanBatiste represents District 2 and lives in the Cade area. She and Parish President Pete Delcambre attended Thursday’s hearing.
“When I got elected, I heard a lot of concerns from the residents that they wanted a lot of help and assistance with addressing concerns with the landfill,” she said. “So my part in this was to get with my council members who supported me in requesting this hearing with DEQ so the residents of the community could have a public forum to share their concerns.”
Pugh submitted a list of 110 violations that he said were issued by DEQ in 12 inspections over the past 25 months, the most recent being a complaint of a rotten egg smell in February.
“This is very common to smell this from Highway 182,” Pugh said. “Greenpoint has many failed inspections. They’ve had at least three penalty assessments. They’ve had several warning letters, several compliance letters. Why should you be rewarding poor performance like this with an expansion.”
Earl Walker, who lives next door to the landfill, said that he knows there’s a lot of money involved in the deal, but he’s had to deal with the issues on a daily basis.
“The odor is awful,” he said. “When I left my house to come here, I smelled the odor. When it rains, the gentleman says they’ve got clay so the water won’t get back into the (water) table, but when it rains too much, the water drains into the ditch along the highway, so that water is going into the table.”
Much of the community near the landfill is comprised of people related to each other, so they look out for each other, he said.
“This thing here has been bothering me for the last 20, 30 years, since it first started,” he said.
The landfill originally was proposed because the property had been used to dig out clay to make bricks, Walker said, and left a hole a hundred or so feet deep. Now the landfill stands many feet above the ground.
“We didn’t have no idea that these people were going to go up this high,” he said. “We thought it was just going to fill up the hole and it was going to end, or we would never have done this.
“We just want y’all to look at us as people, as human beings. … It’s just hard. We’ve been complaining for years and nobody listens to us. And we know this is wrong.”
Residents just want to be allowed to live their lives, he said.
“We want to be able to walk out of the house and not smell dust, and have trouble breathing,” he said. “I have trouble breathing. I monitor my grandchildren’s time outside in the air. This is wrong. I’m just asking you guys to do the right thing.”
Walker said that the dust is so bad that at one point, someone who visited him parked their car outside for a few days, and when they got ready to leave, the inside of the car was filled with dust.
“We just want respect and to be treated like human beings,” he said.
Joseph Cormier said that though only a few nearby residents were speaking at the meeting, they represent many more people in the area who care about the issue.
“I’m only here because I don’t want to let my neighbors down, because I feel like the people who are not here (feel like) you really don’t care and we’re wasting our time,” Cormier said.
Health impacts are the main concerns for many, he said, with an inquiry to an Artificial Intelligence program stating that communities near Type III dumpsites report a 30-40 percent increase in respiratory diseases due to air pollution and dust; water contamination affecting 60-70 percent of nearby residences; soil contamination; and social and economic impacts including increased healthcare costs.
Cormier talked about the dump, its dust and the nuisance it is, as well as the hostility bullying of him when he went to complain about the dust. Cormier said the facility called the police to tell him to stay off their property, but trucks going to the landfill frequently drive across his driveway and leave tracks.
Cormier said many nearby residents feel the entire system, including police, are stacked against residents and in favor of the landfill owners.
“I’m a sharecropper’s son,” he said. “We all know about dust, but not when it’s intrusive and it’s overbearing and it’s affecting our quality of life.
“We’ve been dealing with this for quite some time now. We care. We care about our life. We care about what we’ve invested in. We care about the hope of our parents, our present, and our future. Our children are depending on what we have now to leave for them, and they’re raping us and violating us daily.”
Rattliff said he and his wife own property adjacent to the landfill and are greatly impacted by the facility. They met with other landowners on Burke Road who are affected by the landfill.
“I want to stand in opposition to this permitting action,” Rattliff said. “A large group of impacted citizens in the community of Cade and the surrounding areas are against any expansion that is vertical, lateral, or repurposing of this property.
“We all know it’s not being operated right and there’s no pass in St. Martin Parish for bad operators.”
Rattliff also asked for better management of the facility, and for the DEQ to make sure that it works the way it is supposed to, with active monitoring and proactive management.
“Make it right,” he said.
Jake Etcheverria said he’s the newest resident on Burke Road moved there with his wife and two young children from Arizona.
Etcheverria said that a similar landfill covering on an Indian reservation in Arizona is covered in inches of concrete but still has a terrible smell and presents a terrible view in that area.
“We’re asking today to do less coverage on land that’s 295 yards exactly from my backyard,” he said. “I think we’re all understanding that a landfill in residential area is probably not the best.”
Etcheverria said his neighbors know he is obsessive-compulsive about keeping his vehicle clean and keeping the grass mowed.
The erosion in the landfill and trash in his yard is tough for him to deal with, he said.
“Cutting grass for free is my favorite thing to do, to keep our street and our homes clean,” he said. “And then I come home to Styrofoam in my backyard. It’s very disheartening because my kid was coming out with a long strip of packaging, waving it around in my backyard as a toy.”
He said the landfill needs to finish its current permit, then cap it with a quality material so he doesn’t have to look out from his backyard to a view of trash sticking out from eroded landfill covering the way he does now.
Maulette JeanBatiste, who also lives near the landfill, is concerned that money should not overrule the community’s needs.
“When does it stop for the people?” she asked. “Our voice doesn’t stand anymore. That’s my concern.”
Winnie Journet also spoke out against any modifications to the permit.
“I have family that lives in the Cade area and it’s very concerning the way it’s affected them in a very negative way,” she said. “Everyone’s talking about odors. If it’s a (construction and demolition) facility, why are there odors coming from that area?”
Episcopal School of Acadiana is less than a mile away from the landfill, and is also affected, Pugh said.
