MOSCOW, Ohio — A terrible stench from a landfill in Washington Township is giving residents headaches and making them sick, they say, forcing them to close house windows, abandon porch sitting and avoid driving by the site where coal waste has been stored for decades.
“It smells like raw sewage. It smells very bad. It’s an odor that you feel like you’re going to get sick. That’s how bad the odor is,” said Carla Benjamin, who lives a half-mile away from the landfill. “I’ve even gone out to see if it’s my own sewer because I thought, ‘What is that stench?’ And come to find out it’s up the road, it’s the landfill.”
The landfill is in the center of this rural Clermont County township on what was once a dairy farm, and growing land for hay, tobacco, wheat and corn. In the mid-1980s, then Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company decided to convert the troubled William H. Zimmer plant on the Ohio River, from nuclear power to burn coal. It began buying up family farms a few miles away on the hill, to build a landfill for leftover coal ash with a massive perimeter around it.
The Clermont County auditor’s site lists the total parcel size at 1,453 acres, with the landfill in the middle like a barren bullseye surrounded by deep tree cover.
“We lost a lot of prime farmland,” said Dennis Cooper, chairman of the Washington Township board of trustees.
“Now we’re paying for it,” chimed in Dave Peters, a fellow township trustee.
For decades residents say they lived near the landfill with few complaints, except for occasional bad odors.
Something changed eight or nine months ago, when residents say the odor got much worse especially at night, in the early morning hours and after it rains.
“When I drive past it, it almost takes your breath some days,” said longtime resident John Jones. “The smell gets inside your car and it’s almost like somebody defecated in your car.”
Benjamin said her boyfriend changed his morning route to work to avoid the landfill because, "You can't hardly breathe, you have to hold your breath to get through there. He said it's so bad."
Numerous residents complained to the Ohio EPA, Clermont County Public Health, the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency and local officials over the past six weeks. Air quality inspectors visited the landfill three times in the past month, during daytime hours and on weekdays, and either smelled a faint odor or no odor at all.
Air quality inspectors first visited the site unannounced on March 15, due to a string of sulfur-like odor complaints from residents. Landfill workers "reported no changes in operations or increase in odor complaints to them directly,” according to the inspection report.
A day later, the Ohio EPA visited the site on March 16 to conduct air readings around the landfill perimeter. A spokesperson said hydrogen sulfide was detected at two of the 16 test locations, but readings weren’t high enough to require an order-forcing action.
“Ohio EPA will continue to work with the landfill, the local health department and air agency, as well as the community, on ways to mitigate odor issues and address residents’ concerns,” said spokesperson Anthony Chenault.
Hydrogen sulfide is a gas that smells like rotten eggs. It can be toxic at high levels, and exposure to low concentrations may cause irritation to the eyes, nose or throat, difficulty breathing, headaches, tiredness and balance problems, according to the U.S. EPA website.
“I get a headache from it … a very hard headache,” said Peters, who began circulating a petition demanding the state EPA do more. “I’ve got 25 signatures here of people smelling it back there, from all around this area … I could get triple this if I really went around this township. ... Every one of these people here is wanting something done.”
A spokesperson for Zimmer’s owner, Texas-based Vistra Corp., said it has operated odor mitigation systems at the landfill since 2017, with upgrades such as better pond aeration, carbon filtration and air neutralization systems, and essential oil diffusers that inspectors noted had a “distinct cinnamon smell.”
Peters said the stench is at its worst early in the mornings, “because they don’t take care of the landfill in the nighttime.”
But Vistra spokesperson Jenny Lyon said odor control systems operate day and night and are not dependent on staff presence.
“Intermittent odors near the landfill and State Route 52 can result from water or leachate that comes from an inactive part of the landfill and is collected in the sedimentation pond. Zimmer operates the landfill in compliance with all applicable permits and regulations,” Lyon said.
But Thom Cmar believes the smell may be coming from buried coal ash that has been unearthed from the Zimmer plant a few miles away and brought to the landfill in the past few months.
Cmar is a senior attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm based in Washington, D.C., who reviewed records related to Zimmer and its landfill.
“There's a high level of sulfate in that waste that was buried underground for years,” Cmar said. “Over time as that waste is underground in oxygen-starved conditions, the sulfur that's in that waste gets converted into hydrogen sulfide gas.”
When the coal waste is dug up, there may be high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas that is emitted, Cmar said, and “if residents are exposed at high levels, it can be very dangerous to their health.”
Vistra closed the Zimmer plant on May 31, 2022, but kept the landfill open so it could receive Zimmer’s leftover coal waste and lime sludge from the Miami Fort Generating Station in Hamilton County, which Vistra also owns.
"It (the odor) has gotten stronger, in my opinion, since the plant has shut down," Jones said.
Benjamin said she used to smell the rotten egg odor when she drove by the Zimmer plant which sits on the Ohio River near the village of Moscow, but the odor has migrated up to the landfill now.
The Ohio EPA issued a permit to Zimmer's owner on May 11, 2022, allowing workers to remove buried coal waste from a runoff pond at the plant and take it to the landfill. This would allow the company rebuild a three-foot clay soil liner to comply with federal laws at the plant.
Lyon said no residents have complained about the project, or conveyed symptoms like headaches or nausea to Vistra.
But Cooper said he spoke with Vistra officials and it didn't go well.
"The response I got was basically, we’re doing everything legally in compliance,” Cooper said. “Come out here and live with our residents and smell this 24/7. We just want it resolved. We can’t continue this way.”
Peters agreed, “I don’t have faith in the EPA, that’s my opinion.”
Environmental agencies should more closely monitor the landfill smell, Cmar said.
“If you have inspections that are only happening during the day, that are only happening when the facility is at its best, that's not adequate when it sounds like the biggest complaints from local residents are at night and on the weekends,” Cmar said. “Unfortunately, when you have a landfill that's potentially leaking dangerous amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas, that's not a 9-5 problem, that’s a 24-7 problem.”
Inspection records obtained by the WCPO reveal that the landfill experienced power outages on three separate weekends since March 4, ranging from a few hours to several days, which paused odor control operations.
“During these events, staff was on site monitoring the restoration times provided by the utility company. Systems were immediately returned to service once electric power was restored,” Lyon said.
But Benjamin wants Vistra to do more to help residents, who are worried about their health and their property values.
“I don’t think they’re taking care of it properly. Or we wouldn’t be smelling this,” said Benjamin. “I want them to clean it up. And I don’t want to have this smell in my backyard every day.”
