Stafford County’s Rappahannock Regional Landfill will be enlarged by about an acre because of problems with groundwater.
County documents state Dichloroethane, an agent known to cause cancer, was found “in concentrations exceeding the permitted groundwater protection standards [GPS] in monitoring well MW-B, which is located on the western boundary of the property.”
Stafford County spokeswoman Shannon Howell states the groundwater contamination is not affecting any homes or businesses, and the levels are lower than permitted limits. A treatment plan put in place last year helped to lower the levels, stated Howell.
Stafford will purchase 1.3 acres of land that had been used by the Virginia Department of Transportation to house a storage facility on Eskimo Hill Road. The land is valued at $18,000.
There is a closed, unlined cell in the area where the landfill be expanded. When looking at it on a map, the new land will bump out the boundary of the landfill, and that will allow more room for the landfill to extend its “permit compliance point” further out from the existing footprint.
“To address the compliance matter, the landfill staff can treat the Dichloroethane to eliminate the exceedance and/or purchase a portion of the VDOT parcel to extend the boundary and ensure that any future exceedance will be contained within our property limits. We are doing both,” stated Howell in an email.
The landfill took in 127,000 tons of waste in 2014, an 11% increase over the previous year.
