February 24, 1999
Residents fear nearby landfill may be leaking chemicals
By Carol Bogart
Staff Writer
It's not known when residents living near an abandoned landfill, which they suspect may be leaking cancer-causing chemicals into the water, will get some answers from Ohio EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Bowling Green office already is busy in Marion, trying to address concerns of parents there that land under a high school may be contaminated with PCBs which are causing leukemia in students.
Even so, the agency's Division of Emergency Response and Remediation in Bowling Green could start looking into the Tiffin landfill yet this week.
Tuesday, Jim Leach of the EPA's Columbus office said the division's Mike Czeczele forwarded a message that ''we PROBABLY are going to try to do something out there at the (closed Tiffin city) landfill.''
Leach said the Ohio EPA will look at ''what (financial) resources it has and when it will fit into the schedule.''
Internal memos concerning a discharge permit for a leachate-polluted stream running into the Sandusky River date back to 1997. Leachate is water that hasbeen in contact with solid waste. The state EPA had noted back thean the need for monitoring to determine if groundwater under the landfill had been contaminated.
Yet, Leach said, ''I'm really not familiar with this site.''
Ohio EPA said the city of Tiffin is responsible for monitoring the groundwater. Yet, city offocials say, that recommendation never was passed on to Tiffin. And according to adminstrator Wayne Stephens, the EPA never required the city to get a discharge permit for leachate running off the site into the Sandusky River.
Last week, the Division of Emergency Response and Remediation's Czeczele said it doesn't matter if the site qualifies as a Superfund site. ''Contamination is contamination,'' Czeczele said. He promised to ''get on it as soon as possible'' and guessed that might come as early as today.
Leach couldn't say when Ohio EPA will have a handle on whether it has the money or time to address the cancer concerns of the people in Tiffin, but said he would contact Czeczele to try to get some answers.