As Horry County plans massive landfill expansion, residents demand more transparency
As Horry County officials plan to expand the local landfill by dozens of acres, adding hundreds of thousands of tons of waste each year, residents are demanding greater transparency in how the landfill is run.
“I think you guys are doing a fantastic job, the way this thing is being run is perfect, but you need to open your mouths up in order to communicate,” Andrew Rosaforte, who moved from New York to the S.C. Highway 90 corridor, said. Rosaforte, along with about a half-dozen other local residents, attended a public meeting Wednesday afternoon where they called on the Solid Waste Authority to create a citizen oversight group to monitor operations and complaints about the landfill.
“I think it’s important we have some kind of community activist organization, or whatever you want to call it, that lets the community of Horry County know what’s going on at the Solid Waste Authority,” Rosaforte added.
That ask comes as officials with the Solid Waste Authority have begun the process to expand the county’s landfill by 43 acres, which could add up to 500,000 tons of waste per year. It would extend the life of the landfill through 2051.
As the Solid Waste Authority has pursued permits with the Department of Health and Environmental Control for that expansion, it elected to negotiate with a committee of residents. That’s known as the FIN — “Facility Issues Negotiation” — process. It’s a DHEC-controlled legal process that makes resident input part of the Solid Waste Authority’s eventual permit.
A past FIN process — tied to a past landfill expansion — resulted in the Solid Waste Authority building turn lanes on S.C. 90 to reduce traffic congestion from dump trucks on the two-lane highway.
After several months of meetings, the FIN committee has focused on asking the Solid Waste Authority for a public oversight committee that could seek information about the landfill, lodge complaints and work with the board of directors to ensure a smooth operation.
Solid Waste Authority leaders, though, have rebuffed that request. They said they’re already transparent and that a citizen oversight committee would muddle landfill operations.
“They said they had a total open-door policy and that they would answer any questions. But when people keep asking questions like I do, they start charging for the answers,” said FIN committee member and S.C. 90 resident Amelia Wood, referring to Freedom of Information Act requests she’s sent to the authority over the years.
An oversight committee, Wood said, “might have some tough questions, and we don’t want to keep paying for the answers to the tough questions.”
Solid Waste Authority Director Danny Knight, though, argued that his agency posts financial information and meeting videos online, offers landfill tours to the public and doesn’t charge for FOIA requests if requesters view agency records in person.
An oversight committee, Knight said, “will not guarantee any transparency.”
“For the life of me, (I don’t know) how a group would offer more to the community than the community being able to walk in the front door, get on public input at a board meeting,” Knight said. “We just can’t see the need for a committee.”
Despite that transparency, the Solid Waste Authority has hardly been immune to criticism and conspiracies. A year ago, for example, county officials descended on the landfill to take water samples after a local blogger alleged E.coli bacteria were leeching into the surrounding swamp.
Water quality data, collected by Coastal Carolina University and independently analyzed, show no such leeching.
On Wednesday, resident David Lukeson said he wants such a committee, “to be able to speak with you and let you know how the community at large feels about what’s happening here. We think that’s an important part of your administration.”
At Wednesday’s public meeting, though, the Solid Waste Authority board did vote on one transparency-related measure: Moving its next public meeting on the landfill expansion to the evening.
To date, meetings about the landfill expansion have been held during the afternoon. Regular board meetings of the authority are held in the mornings.
Residents like Rosaforte see morning board meetings as “taking advantage of the community.”
“We have jobs, we’re working,” he said. “If we stop working, nobody pays our bills, friend, nobody pays our bills.”
Residents like Lukeson said an oversight committee was essential for the landfill.
“Transparency is the word of the new millennia,” he said, “and we think we need it with you.”
