The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has been instructed to issue a written report on how the department’s multimillion-dollar takeover of the NABORS landfill in Baxter County could’ve been avoided. ADEQ is overseen by the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, and according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the commission voted Friday to request the report.
Commissioner Wesley Stiles had asked the department to provide him with a report a year ago to explain the landfill situation. He asked ADEQ Director Becky Keogh on Friday why he had not yet received a report. Keogh said she understood an oral report would suffice.
Stiles said he believes local entities made mistakes resulting in the NABORS landfill becoming financially unsustainable, but he wondered why ADEQ hadn’t intervened sooner since it oversees regional solid waste management districts. Keogh said the department can’t always prevent decisions made on a local level, and the departments works with solid waste districts track landfills’ financial status.
Although the NABORS landfill is owned by the Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste District, it has been run by ADEQ since 2014. The district voted to default on a $12.3 million dollar bond in 2012 when it stopped collecting trash. That was its only source of revenue.
ADEQ signed a $12.9 million contract in May with KOLB Grading, LLC, of Weldon Spring, Missouri, to clean up the landfill. As part of being in receivership with the department, the Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste District is to reimburse the department for the cleanup and and for another project to clean up a dump of one million tires next to the landfill.
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