PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Department of Public Health has denied a permit extension for the operation of the Port Townsend Paper Corp.’s inert landfill.
The mill has 10 days to appeal the decision.
The denial of the permit renewal was disclosed in an Oct. 17 letter from Jefferson County Health Officer Dr. Thomas Locke to Annika Wallendahl, the mill’s environmental manager.
Locke said the application failed to “adequately address the issues of groundwater monitoring, financial assurance for closure costs, and waste stream characterization that are required for permit renewal.
“Moreover,” he wrote, “it is our conclusions that these issues cannot be adequately addressed without correcting the misclassification of [Port Townsend Paper’s] waste as inert.”
“We are surprised and very disappointed at the county’s decision,” Port Townsend Paper Corp. President Roger Loney said in an email to the Peninsula Daily News.
“This is clearly inconsistent with the approach that was laid out in the work that has been done with the county and the Department of Ecology over the past year.
“We still need to review the county document before deciding our path forward.”
“They have the right to appeal,” said Jefferson County Environmental Officer Pinky Feria Mingo.
“I don’t believe our decision was inconsistent with what we have been saying all along.”
The mill requested an inert permit against the advice by Locke and the state Department of Ecology to instead seek the more environmentally stringent limited purpose landfill (LPL) designation.
According to Mingo’s staff recommendation to deny the permit, the mill never should have been issued an inert permit in the first place.
“This has been contentious since 1989 when Ecology first advised Jefferson County Public Health that [Port Townsend Paper’s] limegrit and ash did not meet the definition of inert,” the memo reads.
Using the abbreviations for Jefferson County Public Health and Port Townsend Paper Corp., the memo continues:
“It is unclear why JCPH issued PTPC the 2004 inert waste permit, when Ecology’s technical staff and program management team concurred that PTPC’s landfill should remain a limited purpose landfill.”
In his letter, Locke said Port Townsend Paper’s waste stream “does not meet the criteria to be classified as inert.
“Continued permitting of the PTPC landfill as an inert waste landfill even with additional requirements relating to groundwater and financial assurance, would fail to correct the fundamental error that occurred in the 2004 reclassification of the landfill from limited purpose to inert waste,” he wrote.
Mingo wrote in her report that new information about the dangers of limegrit and ash — found in the landfill — has been published since the permit was last addressed in 2003.
She also criticized the security around the landfill.
“On an inspection on May 22, 2012, I had asked about the perimeter fence and whether or not there had been any security breaches,” Mingo wrote.
“[I learned that] several years ago young children had accessed the site with their motorcycles.
“More recently, I became concerned about access to the landfill when a concerned citizen emailed several photographs that appeared to be taken from inside the landfill.
“In a letter to the mill, I specifically requested they address access to the site in the permit renewal, [but] they responded inadequately, requesting that JCPH inform potential trespassers of the legal jeopardy.”
Loney said he stands by the company’s operation of the facility.
“Port Townsend Paper remains committed to the sound environmental management of the landfill,” he wrote.
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
