City of Gastonia announced recently that property around Sims Legion Park is currently under construction in order to mitigate potential impacts of an old landfill on the property. Portions of the property contain a pre-regulatory landfill that reportedly began operations at the site around 1940 and continued through approximately 1948.
The North Carolina General Assembly created the Pre-Regulatory Landfill Program to assess and remedy public health and environmental hazards posed by pre-1983 landfills and dumps existing before there were regulations preventing hazardous materials dumping. Prior to the passage of this law that created the Program, owners and operators of the landfill property and other responsible parties were obligated to fund any required assessment and cleanup work to address the public health and environmental hazards posed by these sites. Under the authorizing legislation, cooperating owners do not have to conduct the work at their expense. A state-wide disposal tax is used to pay for these expenses.
The Program completed an investigation of the Sims Park landfill in 2023, and a remedial action plan was prepared and finalized in 2024 to address potential risks posed by the landfill, with a design to allow for specific uses of the site while insuring long-term effectiveness with appropriate maintenance.
The remedial action design primarily includes establishing erosion and sediment control measures to minimize the impact of land disturbance on the nearby creek, removal of the trees in the areas of buried waste due to the potential for toppled trees to expose buried waste in the future, and grading of the on-site drainage feature to minimize exposure of buried waste in the future due to erosion. Areas of the site that were previously found to have an insufficient thickness of cover material over the buried waste will be supplemented with additional cover soil. Vegetation will be established over the construction area at the end of the project to prevent erosion.
The overall cost of the investigation and remediation of the landfill is approximately $2,000,000 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.
