(The following story by Leeanne Root appeared on the Oneida Dispatch website on April 15.)
ONEIDA, N.Y. — CSX Transportation has 5,217 tons of soil and 3,600 tons of liquid it needs to dispose of as a result of the train derailment in March and it started getting shipped out Friday.
But the materials will not be taken to the Madison County Landfill.
Bob Sullivan, CSX spokesperson said they will be taken to a number of various sites both in New York State and Canada.
He said some of the waste was scheduled to be taken to High Acres Landfill in Fairport, N.Y. and some to Model City Chemical Waste Dump near Buffalo, N. Y. He said some materials were also being taken to Niagara Falls and Canada.
“Each of them is fully qualified to take the material-the destinations have been approved by the NYDEC,” Sullivan said. “We are continuing to approach this the way we have from the start, which is in a very diligent and responsible way.”
He said he wasn’t sure specifically what the liquid was but that it is non-hazardous.
Madison County Landfill Director James Zecca said he was considering accepting the soil and the landfill consultant recommended that it be closely monitored after small levels of PCBs were found in the soil.
Zecca said PCBs are a hazardous chemical once found in electrical transformers, but it is not used anymore.
“It wasn’t over the mandated requirements but it was still there and the concern was-it may lead to problems later on down the road with the disposal of the leachate,” he said.
He explained that the leachate is a liquid that trickles through the waste and is collected and sent to a wastewater treatment plant.
“It could affect the wastewater quality and then it would be difficult to try to dispose of the leachate in the future, so to avoid problems their recommendation (consultant) was not to accept it,” Zecca said.
Sullivan said the PCBs were not related to the derailment.
“There is absolutely no indication that it would have come from the derailment, there is nothing that would suggest that it would have come from the derailment,” Sullivan said.
Zecca said it was CSX’s choice not to use the Madison County Landfill. The landfill would typically take contaminated soil in to use as cover material at $20 a ton. But because the landfill already had an overabundance of cover material, Zecca said the CSX soil could only be taken in as solid waste at $63 a ton.
The cover material. basically dirt, is used to go over new material, basically trash, brought into the landfill every day.
“It’s for sanitary reasons. Years ago the operations were called open dumps and you would have rat and rodent problems and blowing debris and odor problems, so the daily cover is for basically sanitary and safety reasons,” Zecca said.