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Residents Near Birchwood Landfill Suffering Through StinkSay it causes headaches, eye and stomach problemsBIRCHWOOD AIRPORT - If you lived downwind of a landfill you probably wouldn’t be surprised if there was an occasional odor. But some people who work very close to the Birchwood landfill say they are putting up with an unhealthy stink almost every day. “By 8 o’clock you’ve got a headache, your eyes are watering and you are coughing,” said Mariann Falcone. Falcone works at the Birchwood Airport. She’s describing what many people feel about an odor that’s been drifting their way for months. “It kind of gets all the way down in your throat, you can feel it down in your stomach, it’s pretty bad,” said John Daily, whose plane is parked at the Birchwood Airport. Neighbors complain of headaches, watery eyes and queasy stomachs that are coming from a stinky smell that is hard to describe. “Sometimes it smells like sewer, sometimes it smells like rubber's burning; you keep looking over there and you don’t see black smoke but it's like what’s going on?“ said Falcone. The landfill is owned by the Birchwood Shooting Club and is located just beyond the firing range. The Department of Environmental Conservation has been keeping tabs on it and said the smell is no mystery. The odor is coming from decomposing construction waste. Chipped up construction materials were buried deep in the landfill, they got wet and started a perfect storm of stinkiness. “They got too much water in there from last year’s rain and some of the snow melt from earlier this year,“ said DEC worker Lori Adrich. “It was just the right combination of materials for it to start to decompose.” According to the DEC, the landfill owners are in full compliance and are doing what needs to be done to stop the smell, including churning up the waste to expose it to oxygen. She said the smell is real but getting better. In the meantime some Birchwood residents say they will worry until it goes away completely. The landfill owners say that will happen soon. They plan to put a thick layer of dirt over the troublesome section of the landfill in the next few weeks. As soon as the soil is warm enough to dig up, they plan to close off that section of the landfill for good. |
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Anne said on Friday, Apr 6 at 8:10 PM
I have posted this on facebook and may it go viral and put pressure to shut it down. That puts us all in danger when we eat salmon. Yes, they need to be fined heavily, but most of all clean up the damage. It might take years before people can drink the water.
86662025Marilyn said on Thursday, Apr 5 at 2:54 PM
The Birchwood Shooting Club has no business letting this happen. What are they thinking? Landfill is garbage and pollution...period. Just because Alaska has less than a million residents doesn't allow them to destroy the environment. They should be fined heavily and forced to close down that dump AFTER they haul away all the garbage. The trucks who dumped it wasted a lot of gas/diesel creating this mess and now will have to spend lots more to clean it up. Shame on them for creating such a health hazard in the first place. How are they going to clean up the ground water? None of it is safe to drink anymore. BAD BAD PEOPLE need to be PUNISHED. Hit them in the pocketbook where it counts. Thank you KTVA for bringing this to the public's attention. Put the pressure on the Shooting CLub to CLEAN UP THEIR ACT.
86556015Terry said on Wednesday, Apr 4 at 10:12 PM
First, it did not use to be a dump! Lets open one next to your home or place of employment. I sure you can afford to close your business or quit you job or endanger your childrens health. We don't know whats in the dump or what we or our kids are breathing.
86486165Mariann said on Wednesday, Apr 4 at 10:17 AM
The whole purpose of calling the news is that this dump, that opened a couple years ago, is unlined, sits on the Cook Inlet waterway within a couple hundred yards of a salmon spawning stream. It has polluted our well water--we can't drink it. The stench is NOT only construction waste it has hazardous materials in there too. BTW we bought our hanger in '91 about 18years before it opened
86437084Tom said on Tuesday, Apr 3 at 4:19 PM
Its a dump. Do not work or live by a dump.
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