Wayne County hazardous waste site OK'd for changes in landfill storage

Jun 23, 2023

State environmental regulators have approved a Wayne County hazardous waste facility's request for a modified operating license.

The approval allows the facility, Wayne Disposal Inc. in Van Buren Township, to redesign its liner and incorporate geosynthetic clay liners into portions of the 120-acre landfill instead of compacted clay.

The modified license "also requires extensive groundwater, soil and air monitoring, on an ongoing basis," the state said in a fact sheet about the project.

Wayne Disposal Inc. is owned and operated by U.S. Ecology. It is nestled between Willow Run Airport to the north and Interstate 94 to the south in western Wayne County near Belleville. The company is not seeking to expand its overall footprint.

Inspectors have not found the facility to be in violation of the Clean Air Act or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in the last three years, according to online U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, signed in 1976, sets standards for solid and hazardous waste disposal.

Inspectors found Wayne Disposal Inc. to be out of compliance with the Clean Water Act for two quarters in the last three years — at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020. The violations were not considered significant. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy issued the facility a notice of violation under the Clean Water Act in 2020.

The landfill has had state approval to accept hazardous waste since 1990 and federal approval to accept PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls, man-made chemicals that were banned in 1979 and shown to cause health issues including cancer — since 1997.

The EPA also is considering a request from the facility to modify its PCB approval and liner system, which "would allow WDI to continue to develop its current PCB capacity of 12 million cubic yards." The liners would be placed in portions of the landfill already approved to accept PCB waste, the EPA said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tentatively plans to approve the request.

The landfill found itself at the center of controversy over fracking in 2014 when it announced it would be importing hydraulic fracturing waste from Pennsylvania.

At the time, it was one of only 17 facilities in the U.S. qualified to handle fracking waste, known as "technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material."

Opponents said the material shouldn't be shipped through and stored in a state with such vast freshwater resources. They also took issue with the process of fracking itself, which ultimately produces natural gas, a fossil fuel used to create electricity.

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