by Amy Ash Nixon, in the Journal Opinion

THETFORD—A special meeting of the Thetford Selectboard was held Monday evening with officials from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources to discuss long-term planning and public health concerns related to the now-closed Post Mills landfill, where a solar array is planned.

The groundwater under and beyond the landfill is contaminated. But the state’s closure plan, which committed ANR to responsibility for 20 years, has expired, and there is no new plan now in place.

The state has continued to conduct environmental testing at the site despite the closure of that 20-year window. But the town and many residents are concerned about the presence of PFAS in 5 of 8 monitoring wells at the site, noting that four wells tested above the Vermont standard.

Thetford officials and citizens called the meeting with ANR staff to discuss, in part, “How to avoid exposure of residents to poisoned groundwater and protect existing and future drinking water supplies in Post Mills,” a list of planning and public health concerns laid out.

Further, community members are worried that they have been cut out of discussions between the state and a prospective purchaser of the property. 

Thetford Town Manager Brian Story said the former landfill has been capped and closed for many years, but the nonprofit Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation wants to take it over and develop a solar array through a state brownfields program.

Story said on Monday that environmental testing has “not revealed any significant spread of contamination.”

“All of that testing is being paid out of a fund created for that purpose when it was closed,” Story explained. “The [brownfields] program would allow GMEDC to take the property over, without assuming any liability for damages caused by the landfill contamination before they owned the property.”

The monitoring may continue once GMEDC takes over the site. 

“The big issue is that the discussion about the future of the property is happening between the state and GMEDC,” he said. “Many residents feel that they are not well represented in these talks. We are not privy to them and are not consulted about how their decisions could impact us.”

Story said a petition containing nearly 70 signatures was submitted on April 10, pressing for a public meeting about the closed landfill and its future.

Story said the special meeting Monday evening was not prompted directly by the petition, because there was not a mechanism to compel such a meeting. 

“However, the petition told the town and state officials how important it was to people,” he said “So, we worked together to arrange it.”

So, on Monday night, state officials responded to local questions

Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation’s Shawn Donovan told those at the meeting that the state is moving out of the assessment phase and into the corrective action planning phase for the old landfill site.

Selectboard member Li Shen asked state officials about the PFAS levels found in well sampling, referring to PFAS as “the forever chemical.”

In recent years, the state has undertaken PFAS testing at the former landfill site and in the neighboring area.

Michael Smith, of consulting firm Stone Environmental, said that PFAS can bind to carbon in the soil and can essentially become immobile. He said there is no evidence that the PFAS found in wells at the old landfill are migrating to the nearby Ompompanoosuc River.

Town officials and residents pressed for what will happen if the environmental monitoring fund runs out of money. Donovan said the DEC general counsel would need to respond to that question, saying, “It is a situation we would have to deal with when that time comes.”

Stuart Blood, a town resident, told officials, “We’re concerned about the future. The village of Post Mills is expected to be a focus of growth in town, we’re expecting development.” 

Jim Masland, a Thetford resident and longtime state Representative, asked about the protocol for which wells will be monitored on an ongoing basis, particularly the wells where PFAS have been detected. 

“What we want to see is the trend of PFAS contamination over time, that’s probably the most important thing to many people here.”

“Our plan is to continue to stay and monitor and keep our eye on the facility,” said Dennis Fekert, of the VT DEC.

David Fisk, the head of the Post Mills Water Association, asked state officials about the use of settlement fund. Donovan responded that it was determined the funds could be used for assessing the groundwater contamination on the property.

“Beyond that, it certainly wasn’t used to fund any type of technical assessment for development of a solar array,” he said.

Fekert said the state has worked hard to spend the settlement fund as carefully as possible and to be a careful steward. 

“I do think it was money well spent,” he said.

Blood noted that the settlement fund by February was down to about $136,000, and he expressed concern about the amount spent by Stone Environmental for site testing for the prospective new owner.

Donovan said the known impacts of the groundwater plume mandated that more extensive monitoring be undertaken, 

“More data was needed … PFAS is an expensive lab analysis test.”

Masland responded, “I think it would be useful for some of us to sit down in front of a very large white board soon and map out who is responsible for what and various funding streams … so we can see what we’re talking about.”

One homeowner near the landfill asked if contamination numbers begin to increase, “whose shouldering the liability?”

“The drinking water well, which we also test … if for whatever reason the samples from that location begin to show an increased level of contaminants, there would be a requirement that we would enact that would require pre-treatment, we don’t allow people to drink contaminated water,” said Donovan.

“Usually there is a responsible party … this is an interesting one that I would need to defer to our legal counsel,” he said.

While Post Mills and Thetford community members have long supported the development of a solar array on the former landfill property, the brownfields program support has been slow because of known groundwater contamination on the site, according to an email from Blood to Story outlining the history of the site. 

“As a result of a settlement with the owner of the former landfill, a lump sum insurance payment was used to create a fund to be held by the State of Vermont. The fund was used to develop the Post Mills Community Water Supply, which serves several residences whose wells had been contaminated by landfill leachate. It was then used to pay for the final closure of the landfill with an impermeable cap in 2001,” Blood explained.

Prior to Monday’s meeting, the Thetford Selectboard met on June 3 with John Brabant, a retired ANR hydrogeologist who was involved in the litigation that led to the landfill’s closure and the 20-year monitoring agreement with the state.

He said the property was a former gravel pit which subsequently became a landfill. Post Mills’ shallow, dug water wells became “pretty immediately contaminated.”

Harkay asked why the state permitted the landfill if it was not a good site for one. 

“Every town in Vermont had a landfill … it’s what we did.”

People were more concerned about rats than groundwater at town dumps in earlier days, he said, noting that in the town he lives in, the trash was lit and burned to prevent rodents, for example.

“If the state believes it’s necessary … to see that conveyed in order for a solar project to go forward, I don’t think that’s prudent, I don’t think it’s in the town’s interest,” said Brabant. “I wish I was still working there because I would really be voicing strong opposition to this.”

“In the 1980s, 1970s, even the 1990s, you could put household hazardous waste in that landfill, it was fully legal to do,” said Brabant. “We have a number of unlined landfills in gravel pits where we see groundwater contamination.”

Brabant said, “(K)eeping this under full State management and control is the best outcome and that was the design of this whole thing. This was a lot of effort by the citizens of Post Mills to get us where we are.”

“There is potential for serious unintended consequences,” warned Brabant.