February 22, 1999
Area families wonder if old dump is linked to cancer incidence
By Carol Bogart
Staff Writer
Whenever Delores Weinandy travels down SR 231, she thinks about two things: whether she'll spot an eagle, and how many people living along 231 have cancer.
''It seems like it's every other house,'' she says.
As she passes CR 90, she wonders what's leaching out of the old city dump, and whether it's responsible for her own and the other cancers.
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In 1972, then-President Richard Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau were finalizing plans aimed at cleaning up Lake Erie. DDT was banned to try to save the bald eagle. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act were two years old.
The city of Tiffin was closing its landfill.
The dump is one of 30,000 abandoned landfills nationwide, according to the EPA. Some estimates run as high as 40,000. Landfills, large and small, tucked away and forgotten in small towns scattered across America.
Just east of SR 53 on the north side of CR 90, Tiffin's 35-plus acre dump accepted tons of wastes from 80 percent of the city's population: private residents, plus commercial and industrial dumpers. In 1956, the city bought the 40-acre parcel from farmer, Dean Nye.
By 1965, city residents paid just $12 a year for weekly pickup. Back before it was illegal to throw such things in the trash, junk picked up by city trucks could include such things as paint thinners, old batteries and pesticides.
Like other landfills of its day, for the first 10 years of operation the Tiffin landfill had few requirements. No liner. No regulations for disposal of hazardous waste.
In 1968, as science began finding more links between polluted air and water and human health, new and stronger regulations were passed regarding landfill operations. One big change was the banning of ''open'' dumping. Knowing solid and liquid wastes could no longer just be dumped out on the ground, Tiffin complied with new regulations.
In 1969, the Ohio Health Department approved the city's newest plan. In addition to trash pickup for residents, the city still offered commercial waste hauling. Industries could sign on for pickup of up to four 27-gallon drums of waste a day.
That year, 16,800 tons of solid and liquid waste would be dumped in trenches at the landfill. Ironically, geologists today say trench dumping constitutes a more immediate threat to groundwater. ''Open'' dumping meant more layers of sand and dirt filtering potential contaminants.
Private cars, pickup trucks, commercial trucks and city garbage trucks made daily trips to a dump where, current County Commissioner Kenneth Estep says, ''nobody much cared what you were dumping.'' Estep drove a truck for Hayes-Albion back then and could see what was going in the landfill.
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Weinandy remembers her father telling her about gas station wastes being dumped out there. Her dad worked for Nelson tree service.
For years, the possible contamination of the surface water, the ground water, the aquifers and private wells has worried the Weinandys, plus at least fifty-seven other families living south, east, north and west of the landfill. Ineach family, someone has, or has died of, cancer.
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In 1971, the Seneca County Health District certified the landfill was ''in satisfactory compliance'' with Ohio regulations.
However, documents on file with Ohio EPA in Bowling Green record more than 30 years of correspondence among various agencies focused on what was leaching out of the landfill:
* 1965, Ohio Health Department letter to Tiffin's health commissioner: ''improvement is needed at the disposal area to elevate the method of operation to the sanitary landfill standard.''
* 1968, EPA document: ''An impervious cell barrier is needed ... to prevent leachate, which was very apparent, from washing down the ravine to the river'' * 1969, Ohio Health Department report: Soil analysis and test borings submitted by the city in relation to OHD approval of trench dumping indicate ''ground water contamination is not likely.''
* 1970, EPA: ''The stream nearby (the old open dump area) is being polluted with leachate.''
''Leachate,'' as defined by Ohio EPA's Rick Hassinger,''is waters that come in contact with solid waste.'' John Tinger, with the EPA in Washington, says, ''If you have a landfill you're going to be contaminating the groundwater. All your contamination goes down.''
The groundwater, Ohio Department of Natural Resources geologist Jim Raab says, probably flows north, in the same direction as the Sandusky River.
Although ODNR has apparently never studied groundwater flows in Seneca Township, Raab says it's likely a shallow sand and gravel aquifer (one source of well water in the area) ''probably mimics the surface topography.''
At the landfill, leachate may have run into an abandoned but unclosed well. The well's walls had collapsed. The well pit had filled with water. The water, according to the EPA, was even with the surrounding ground grade. EPA called the situation one that ''compromis(ed) the security of the ground water.''
Now-city administrator Wayne Stephens says the well (used by city workers at least as far back as 1969) was ''always open'' until 1996. A 1989 ODNR pamphlet says unused and abandoned wells can contaminate the aquifer with ''surface contaminants.'' Hohman calls the landfill well a ''deep'' one. Other deep wells in the area draw water from the limestone aquifer.
In 1996, Ohio EPA wrote Stephens a letter citing Ohio Administrative Code Rule 3745-9-10, requiring that the improperly abandoned well ''be rectified.'' The city hired a contractor and closed it properly.
Contamination concerns voiced by area residents date back 30 years or more. As far back as 1974, Duane King complained of leachate draining onto his land. The EPA forwarded his complaint to the Seneca County Health Department. The Health District said it ''did not find evidence of leachate'' during its visit to the dump. Five years later, an EPA inspection did find leachate.
The EPA wrote a letter to Tiffin's then-mayor and council saying its inspection found: ''solid waste ... barrels of liquid waste ... foundry waste ... household waste continues to be deposited in the dump.'' The inspection found ''leachate was ... draining from the site.''
The city said the Health Department had okayed dumping foundry wastes at the closed landfill and said city employees had dumped the liquid wastes in error. EPA said to post no dumping signs and enforce it.
The U.S. Geological Survey has not surveyed the aquifers underneath the dump. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources' map shows two: the sand and gravelaquifer flowing through Seneca and Eden Townships then curving north through Republic and Attica, and a deeper, bedrock limestone.
ODNR has done a non-site-specific pollution index for Seneca County at large, which does not indicate a significant problem in Seneca Township. However, the index is not deemed reliable for areas less than 100 acres. Raab acknowledges the department really doesn't know whether groundwater underneath and around the landfill is contaminated.
Nor is it known which direction the aquifers flow. The Weinandys draw their water from a 120-foot deep well. It comes from the limestone aquifer.
It is not known if limestone is fractured with what Jack Kramer, of Heidelberg's water quality lab, calls ''solution channels.'' Solution channels and sand can be conduits for toxic contaminants to enter private wells.
The EPA's Tinger says, in limestone, contaminants from a closed landfill can, 100 years later, pop up ''50 miles away.'' He says in sand, ''They can pop up anywhere.''
Raab says contaminants from the closed landfill could be flowing north with the river. It's possible, he says, ''some leachate might percolate down to the limestone aquifer.''
The open well posed the threat of a direct entry point for leachate.
In 1997, 25 years after the dump was closed, Hassinger again went to the dump, accompanied by Stephens, Hohman and other city officials. Hassinger, Stephens says, directed the city to take leachate samples from a hillside outside the dump and from a stream inside the landfill.
Eleven contaminants were screened by Aquatech in Melmore. In Washington, EPA's Tinger reviewed the results and said, ''It's obvious they weren't trying to draw any conclusions from this.''
Hassinger calls the results ''inconclusive.'' In an interoffice memorandum two years ago, Ohio EPA geologist Mike Beal said what's needed is ''a groundwater monitoring system ... to determine if the closed landfill facility is affecting the quality of the ground water beneath the facility.''
The mayor and Stephens both say the recommendation was never forwarded to the city. Hohman says, ''They've not contacted me about it. The health department hasn't contacted me about it.'' The mayor is reluctant, he says, ''to unduly put a whole bunch of people in fear here.''
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Weinandy and others she's talked to are already in fear. In fear that landfill leachate has poisoned the limestone aquifer and the water for their wells and is responsible for their cancers.
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In 1996, Ohio EPA's letter to Tiffin talked about requiring the city to get a permit for discharging into the river from the dump. Stephens and Hohman say they never heard anything else about it.
Hassinger says a visual inspection once a year is how the dump is ''monitored.'' He says ''people from the city'' go with him. Stephens recalls no such inspection in 1998. No files -- not EPA's, not the Seneca County Health District's, not the city's -- contain records of regular monitoring.
The EPA says Tiffin, as the owner of the site, is responsible for monitoring, tracking and testing groundwater. Hohman says, ''It is the city landfill, something that was used a long time ago. If there is a concern then certainly it is the city's responsibilitiy to investigate that concern.''
The mayor says he'd like to see a health survey to determine if the cancers near the dump are ''statistically significant.''
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Delores Weinandy doesn't doubt that Tiffin's mayor had little knowledge of the landfill. Obscured by brush and off the beaten path, the dump is, in many ways, ancient history. Out of sight, out of mind ... except for the many families touched by cancer.
Delores, enduring a second bout of breast cancer and chemotherapy, is having her well tested. If it's contaminated, she says, ''I want it to stop here. I don't want my children and grandchildren to go through what I have.''
The National Cancer Institute says, ''Local and state health departments are responsible for conducting cancer cluster studies.'' Until 1980, such studies were done by the Centers for Disease Control or other federal agencies. Today, the CDC is ''called in only for special situations.''
The Seneca County Health Department's outgoing director, Darlene Baney, forwarded the residents' concerns to the cancer cluster specialist in Columbus, ODH's Robert Indian. Indian, she says, ''told (her) not to do anything'' until more information had been collected: How old were cancer patients when they were diagnosed? What was the first cancer they had? How long had they lived in their house? Asked who was supposed to get this information together, Baney says she was told, ''The residents.''
In a letter to Baney, Indian says one condition which would prompt the Ohio Department of Health to initiate a ''special, community assessment of cancer,'' would be ''If there is reason to believe that a defined population has had exposure to a known suspect carcinogen in a quantity or manner that will significantly increase the risks of cancer.'' Baney wrote back and said, ''We did not get any type of concern identified by EPA when we talked to them regarding any carcinogen in the leachate.''
Weinandy and her friend, Gladys Clouse, are trying to get the information the Ohio Department of Health says it needs. Clouse's husband, Dick, died of throat cancer. She says at the time, he was ''one of six cancers in five houses'' along the east side of SR 231 -- a couple miles north of Mohawk High School.
Gladys acknowledges that Dick used to work barehanded with industrial solvents when he was employed at National Machinery. ''His hands were so big,'' she says, ''they couldn't find gloves to fit him.'' Others say he smoked. She, Delores and others know that cancer can be triggered by all sorts of things: an underlying genetic predisposition, lifestyle choices, environmental factors.
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When Heidelberg's water quality lab tests water samples for volatile organic chemicals, metals and nitrates -- all potential threats to health -- its questionaire wants to know about various possible threats to wells. Things like nearby fields (pesticides and herbicides), septic tanks and barnyards. At least one house in the suspect area has tested high for radon. Radon has been linked to lung cancer.
Tiffin Mayor Bernie Hohman, looking over the list of addresses, knew two of the people and said they'd lived in their homes just a short time. Hohman, who says he has melanoma, a malignant skin cancer often attributed to childhood sunburn, recalls working with pesticides as a kid on the farm. He says it's easy to scare people and hopes reporting the cancers won't cause a panic.
Weinandy says people have been talking about it for a long time. Many people, she says, have wondered for years if there's something wrong with the water. Maybe it will turn out not to be the dump, they say. They just wish someone would check the groundwater.
Resident concerns are prompting what Hohman calls ''an informal task force to investigate all facets of the landfill.'' The mayor says the city ''will need to sample some wells.'' Members of theh task force, he says, will be: City Adminstrator Wayne Stephens; Brad Borer, who Hohman calls Tiffin's ''water pollution control person''; Councilman Tom Distel and Law Director Brent Howard.
The mayor says, ''We'll have to do what we have to do'' and said Howard suggested reviewing what other cities have done to address problems resulting from abandoned landfills.
Mayor Hohman is watching with interest the unfolding developments in Marion where hazardous waste from an old munitions dump is suspected of causing leukemia in students attending a high school built nearby.
Last week, a report was released regarding toxins found in soil near the school. Years ago, the dumps apparently left behind PCBs and a chemical called tricholorethylene (TCE.) PCB, according the Army Corps of Engineers report, was once found in industrial lubricants and is a probable carcinogen. According to the report, the chemicals can accumulate in human and animal tissues.
Seneca County Commissioner Janet Dell says a Tiffin doctor has told her he's ''worried about how much cancer we're starting to see in Tiffin.'' Regardless of whether the groundwater flows north or south, the landfill's leachate flows into a stream. The stream dumps directly into the Sandusky River.
In 1998, Ohio American Water said it monitored river and groundwater purified for use as drinking water in Tiffin and found no excess levels of volatile organic chemicals. The water company's operation's manager, Dave Little, says the company goes above and beyond what EPA requires in terms of testing.
Tests done in August 1998 on water drawn from two wells which co-mingle river and groundwater show high levels of two chemical components of a possible carcinogen, trihalomethane.
Little says it's a seasonal abnormality linked to large algae blooms in the river. Over a year's time, Little says, things even out, and the chlorine-related chemical changes fall within EPA guidelines. ''Short-term exposure,'' he says, ''is not a problem.''
Tinger says sand and activated carbon filtration such as the city uses removes most contaminants, including low levels of metals, provided the water is ''already pretty clean.'' He calls such filtration a ''polishing step.''
Rivers, he said, have some capacity to clean themselves due to naturally occurring bugs that break down organic contaminants. He says groundwater is ''more of a concern.'' Once polluted, it stays polluted. Rivers, he says, lose their ability to clean themselves if, overloaded with contamination, they become robbed of oxygen.
Some landfill contaminants, he explains, degrade into ''pretty nasty stuff.'' Contamination, he says, that would not be diluted by the river.
Tinger says Tiffin's landfill does not qualify for Superfund status, even though Superfund legislation ''authorizes the federal government to respond directly to a release or threatened release of hazardous substances.'' Estep says, ''They only do lawyering. They don't clean up many dumps.''
Hohman says, ''We inherited it, but still, we're responsible. We still own it. I think a good place to start would be to test the wells.'' Stephens suggested testing wells of properties immediately adjacent to the landfill. Hohman says the city will definitely test a well on property adjoining the landfill whicharea boy scouts use for camping.
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Ohio EPA's Division of Emergency Response and special projects says it will begin looking into Tiffin's landfill soon. Supervisor Mike Czeczele says, even though he's ''swamped with the problems and politics involved'' in addressing the PCB issue in Marion, he'll ''get on this as soon as I can.'' By mid-week was his estimate.
Mayor Hohman expressed interest in working with EPA to try to determine for the residents if the landfill, something else, or just bad luck is responsible for their cancers.
- To order a test kit from National Testing Laboratories, call toll-free (800)458-3330. $150 screens for all contaminants including pesticides.
- To participate in the proposed Ohio Health Department health assessment:
- Contact the Seneca County Health Department (447-3691) and request a copy of the two-page letter Robert Indian (cancer cluster specialist at the Ohio Department of Health) wrote Darlene Baney Jan. 20. It outlines the information needed to determine if a county-wide health assessment is warranted.