Limiting Intake at Big Run Landfill, Boyd Co KY

Ashland Daily Independent article

Contributor: Citizen Randy Roberson

 

CATLETTSBURG The Boyd County Fiscal Court took two major steps Tuesday toward limiting trash intake at Big Run Landfill.

First, members unanimously approved hiring Paul Nesbitt of Lexington-based Nesbitt Engineering as a consultant throughout Big Run Landfill’s permit renewal phase in January.
Nesbitt has worked with the court in the past regarding the county’s solid waste management plan. He said attempting to lower the total capacity of a landfill is groundbreaking for local government in Kentucky. Second, members unanimously approved a resolution accepting Nesbitt’s recommendation to lower the landfill’s total capacity by about 60 percent — in other words, cutting out about 18 million tons of trash from its currently permitted intake.
If the court is successful, it will be the first government body in Kentucky to reduce the total capacity of a landfill through this process, and the only way to do it is through an amendment to its solid waste management plan.

Nesbitt provided the court with data he obtained through state government agencies, noting it was not a “complete” set of data.

He said at one time, the landfill was accepting about 2,000 tons of garbage per day based on an average calculated for a six-day work week.
After a “boom” in 2013 and another in 2014, the landfill now accepts about 5,500 tons of trash per day. This figure, he said, was based on the last two quarterly reports from the landfill for 2014.
As of 2008, the landfill is permitted a total site area of 576 acres, with the ability to store trash in 255 acres.

Nesbitt said his justification to the state for implementing his suggested capacity reduction would be based off the 2008 slide, the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection-issued agreed order and other problems that appear to correlate with increased intake at the site.
“You can see that there’s a correlation when you look at the tonnage and the violation history that the increased flow into the landfill created some issues for the landfill,” Nesbitt told the court. “Because it is present in terms of violations, the slide and everything else.”
He added the landfill appeared to be able to operate successfully when it accepted about 2,000 tons per day. He recommended the company be required to return to this rate for the next 20 years, which would amount to a total capacity of 12.48 cubic yards.

Trash trains bring East Coast odors

Nesbitt also clarified the amendment is not based on a certain time frame and does not address daily flow. The time frame mentioned was more of a projection based on average intake data.
Boyd County resident Steve Cole asked Nesbitt if he would consider a rate that would effectively reduce the amount of garbage brought in from out-of state sources.
Cole said since the state would ensure the needs of Boyd County and other Kentucky-based customers would be met, lowering the overall capacity even further could cut off intake from some out-of-state sources since those needs are secondary.

Nesbitt, however, said he could not justify writing a suggestion that reflected Cole’s recommendation.

Boyd County Judge-Executive Steve Towler said the amendment could take up to five months to enact and it would have to be presented to the state for approval before becoming law.
EnviroSolutions Inc., the parent company for Big Run Landfill, had its CEO and President Dean Kattler and Regional Vice President Scott Cunningham present at the meeting.
ESI’s public relations representative Phil Osborne said Kattler could not comment on the suggested capacity reduction at this time.
Kattler did, however, release this statement: “We wish more than four of the 35-plus people that attended the fiscal court meeting would have attended yesterday’s two open houses where we could have listened, then answered their questions and concerns.
“We hope to see them at our July 15 open house, where we will be set up and waiting to share information.”

"We will be at your Open House on the 15th !!
This is another How great the Landfill is story by the Daily Independent this RAG is not worth reading it is not telling the full story about the pollution and and cancer causing coal ash, or fracking water waste that this company is destroying our environment with. And Kattler trying to say we are not interested enough to attend his Dog and Pony Show and saying they provide 14% of the county budget.


We got along without your filth money before the Dump Take Your Garbage Back to New Jersey. Good Job Ashland Daily  Independent Lick your Masters boots or kiss their a**'s"

 Randy Roberson

Citizen-Boyd Co Ky

Brad Collins Mayor, Morehead Ky: The Morehead News

Standing Ovation

 Friday, December 7, 2007

At last week’s retirement celebration, the community came out to express its sentiment and appreciation to Brad Collins, and gave him a standing ovation.

 

 

Stephanie Ockerman photo

Following his 13 years as Mayor of Morehead, and after the community honored him last week at the Morehead Conference Center, Brad Collins sat down with Morehead News Executive Editor Denver Brown and offered personal comments on his time in office and on his plans for the future…

Q — Has it sunk in, yet? That you aren’t going into the office you held for the past 13 years?

A - It really didn't sink in until I started to leave on Friday afternoon, and handed in all my keys and my city car, and said goodbye to my staff. Then on Monday I went in to pick up some things and suddenly realized that I would never be back. That made really sad for a while.

Q — What the first thing you want to tackle now that you are officially retired?

A - My wife has a honey do list of 13 years for me to work on, and that will take a while. I would also like to re-finish some furniture that I have been putting off for several years. And it would be nice to travel some, and get to see my grandchildren more. I would also like to stay active in affordable housing work of some kind, and our sister city program.

Q — Looking back, would you do it all again? The same way?

A - Yes, exactly the same!! I learned early in my term as mayor that we have to work together to be able to build and sustain the kind of community that we want and need for our people. The progress that we have experienced has been because of this sense of cooperation and togetherness that we have in our town.

Q — How would you want the people of Morehead to think of you and your administration years from now?

A - My mother, bless her soul, raised 9 children by herself, and I would like to be remembered by what is engraved on her gravestone, "She Did What She Could". She didn't do any great and earth-shattering things while she was on this earth, she just did the job that the Lord gave her to do. I always have tried to do the right thing as mayor, but sometimes that doesn't seem to be the most popular thing to do. I hope the citizens of Morehead realize that the many mistakes that I have made have been honest mistakes, or made out of ignorance.

Q — During your time in the mayor’s chair, what are you most proud of?

A - If I could be proud of any thing that we have done, it would be the affordable housing projects that that we have completed, especially in the West Morehead area where I grew up. I am convinced that one of the most important things you can do for a family is to help them be able to own and pay for a decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable home that they can call their own. It does so much for a family's self respect, and their sense of belonging in the community, and actually makes better citizens of them.

Q — Anything specific you feel you left unfinished or wish you had more time to work on?

A - The Scholar House Program that we applied for last year was a big disappointment when it didn't get funded, and I hope the city leaders will keep trying to get this very important project finished.

Q — Few if any elected officials will talk about failures, but are there objectives or projects you believe were not completed to your liking?

A - There are always things you should have done that you didn't do, and so many things you that you did do that you should not have done. But I hope the citizens of Morehead realize that all of the mistakes and failures of my administration were honest and without being influenced by special interests, or personal gain.

Q — How would you describe these past 13 years in terms of how that time span impacted our community of Morehead?

A - We have had an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and growth in our community in the past 13 years. This didn't happen by accident!! This came about by all the governmental bodies, the businesses, all of our major employers and businesses working together for the common good of us all!!! We all had to put our own personal agendas and prejudices aside and work for the betterment of the entire community. I would urge us all to continue to do this.

Q — Any ambition to run for office at another level? Why?

A - I have learned the hard way to never say never when asked this question. I said I would never run for city council or mayor, but here I am, or was. There are no plans at present to do anything but enjoy my retirement, but who knows what the future may hold. Spoken like a true politician, yes?

Q — It’s certainly tough to thank everyone and you’ve talked recently about so many groups and individuals who have helped you along the way --- can you expand on those?

A - It has been a great honor to represent the citizens of Morehead for the past 13 years. Morehead has the BEST volunteers, the most intelligent volunteers, and the most dedicated volunteers that I have ever seen anywhere, or at any time. A community cannot operate without its volunteers, and that being said, the City of Morehead will continue to thrive and grow as long as we have these types of people living here.

Q — Any advice to future officials of Morehead and Rowan County?

A - Never Give UP!!! NEVER. The conference center took almost 11 years to come to fruition. The Boodry Place project took 6 years to complete. If we have a dream for our community, and the commitment to see it through no matter what, we can accomplish anything by working together. My motto has always been, as the school system is, "Together We Can".

Q — Of course there are many, but if you had to choose just one aspect of your previous job what will you miss the most?

A - Without a doubt, the people. I have always enjoyed talking with people, and helping people, and I will miss this. But the ones I will miss most are the wonderful employees of our city. In case you all don't know this, the City of Morehead has the most professional, most dedicated, and most loving employees that I have ever been or ever will have the privilege to be associated with. It has been such a pleasure to work with each and every one of you as your mayor. Never did I ever think as I was growing up in this town that I would some day be able represent you all over the world. It has been a privilege to serve as your mayor.

From all of us in the Morehead/Rowan County community, thank you Mayor Collins for your hard work, commitment and dedication -- and for making our town a better place to call home!

Austerity deals harsh blow to already stricken land

All In with Chris Hayes / Economy

A reconstructed coal mine features animatronic figures at the Portal 31 Museum in Lynch, KY. The museum is devoted to Kentucky's once thriving coal industry.

Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

11/01/13 12:00 PM

 

By Suzy Khimm

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

A belt of coal on a mountainside in Harlan, KY.

Harlan, Kentucky — Republican Congressman Hal Rogers brought so many federal dollars home to eastern Kentucky’s coal country, he was crowned “Prince of Pork.”
Now that spigot has been turned off, just when his district might actually need it the most.
Competition from natural gas, cheaper coal, and environmental regulations have hastened the demise of the mining industry here, already in decline. More than 6,200 eastern Kentucky miners have been laid off since July 2011. There are now fewer coal jobs here than in 1920, when the great-grandfathers of today’s miners wielded shovels and pick-axes.
But sequestration—a series of across-the-board spending cuts that many Tea Party Republicans have come to embrace—and other austerity measures have accelerated the economic free fall. Unemployment benefits to laid-off miners are shrinking; fewer meals are getting delivered to homebound seniors; and there’s less money to help workers retool for new jobs. Beginning Friday, food stamps will be cut by an average of $36 per month for a family of four.


It’s yet another blow to struggling Appalachian mining towns like Harlan, where the mayor estimates that 15% of the town’s residents have moved out in the past year, searching for work elsewhere. Unsold guns are piling up in pawnshops. Even the local mortician is feeling the pinch: grieving relatives are downgrading from hardwood coffins to two-gauge steel, and ordering five baskets of flowers instead of twenty or thirty. “If I don’t sell to the coal people, I don’t sell,” one Harlan businessman explained.
Rogers has been one of the few Republicans to slam sequestration as devastating, unworkable, and unrealistic. Unless Congress decides otherwise, $109 billion in cuts will continue every year until 2021—a budget that Rogers must implement as chair of the House Appropriations Committee. But many of his Republicans colleagues have embraced the $85 billion in cuts this year as guaranteed spending cuts. It’s unlikely that budget negotiations that started this week in Congress will reverse all of them.
The incremental nature of sequestration —slow rolling, local, and scattered unevenly nationwide—has made the belt-tightening hard to measure and easy to dismiss since the cuts took effect in March. “The people that I’ve talked to seem to be doing well,” Missouri Rep. Billy Long said in April. “In fact, when I got out in restaurants here in town, people come up to me. They want to see more sequestration, not less.”
Even some Democrats believe the White House overhyped the cuts when it made dire predictions about their impact, some of which didn’t pan out. “I think they probably went over the top in terms of saying that the consequences were going to be horrible. The lines in the airports aren’t long, the world hasn’t changed overnight,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
But Harlan sees long lines. They are in the unemployment office, filled with out-of-work miners chasing any rumor of jobs left to be had. A TV in the waiting area explains how federal cuts have chipped away at the safety net most had hoped they would never need.
“Sequestration…What does that mean for you? Your Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits that begin on or after March 31, 2013 must be reduced 10.7% for each week of unemployment through September 2013.”
“Sequestration is a terrible way to do business. I’ve said it since day one. It slices the good with the bad, and removes the duty of Congress to ensure vital programs, like Head Start and various grant programs receive adequate support,” Rogers told MSNBC. “Couple those deep cuts with the rapid loss of coal mining jobs in eastern Kentucky and we’re now facing an economic superstorm.”

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

Donnie Reeves, an unemployed coal mine worker from Harlan, KY. receives retraining in industrial maintenance so he can find a new job.

For Donnie Reeves, 40, each passing week of unemployment means less security. He lost his mining job in March, just weeks before his wife Tiffanie lost her job as a teaching assistant. “After December, it’s no more unemployment, no more nothing,” he said in August.
“I would have to work a minimum of three jobs, each 40 hours a week at minimum wage. That’s to keep the lights on. No groceries, no gas,” said Donnie, who made $70,000 in his best year.
Donnie spent the summer retraining for a factory job through an emergency federal program spared—this time—from sequestration’s axe. Tiffanie found a job helping unemployed Kentuckians like her husband find work.
But with two teenage kids and their hometown’s economy in tatters, the Reeves know that their future may lie outside Harlan, leaving behind a family rooted here for more than 120 years.
“Tiff,” he told her last spring, when they were first considering the idea, “we’re giving up.”

—
For years, Kentucky politicians found funds to cushion the slow death of coal. And no one was better at it than Rogers, chairman of the powerful House appropriations committee.
Since 1981, Rogers has requested more than $460 million in earmarks for the fifth district. All across eastern Kentucky, there are tributes to his largesse. Just a few hours east of Harlan, there’s the Hal Rogers Appalachian Recovery Center for drug addicts; to the west, the water slides at the Hal Rogers Family Entertainment Center. And in between, the Daniel Boone National Forest, honoring the beloved frontiersman whose name nonetheless got booted off the road now called the “Hal Rogers Parkway.”
To Rogers’s defenders, the generous projects aimed to combat the “Appalachia problem”—generational poverty, exploitation, and underdevelopment that’s kept coal country on the margins of prosperity, poor people living in a resource-rich land, according to historian Ron Eller. The unemployment rate in Rogers’s fifth district is the highest in Kentucky, hitting 16% in three counties this August. That’s in an area where the poverty rate is already 27.5%, rising to 34% in families with children under 18.
“There’s no question that federal funding has been vital to progress in southern and eastern Kentucky,” Rogers told MSNBC, citing projects to expand sewer lines, invest in infrastructure, and combat drug abuse.
Just this summer, Rogers was celebrating some of the fruits of his labor.

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

A young member of the Friendship Baptist Church congregation at Sunday services in Cawood, KY.

At the Harlan Girls and Boys Club in August, he praised Appalachia HIDTA, the anti-drug office he created with earmarked money “to spread the word about the ever-present dangers of marijuana.” Another pet project was in evidence as well—Eastern Kentucky PRIDE, an environmental cleanup group run by a former Rogers staffer.
Both groups have been the recipients of millions in federal money, thanks to Rogers. He also secured earmarks for the infamous I-66 “road to nowhere,” which still hasn’t been finished, and a $4 million homeland security contract for a company that hired his own son.
It’s precisely these kinds of projects that drove Tea Partiers to demand a ban on earmarks and more spending cuts when the GOP took over the House in 2010.
Lobbying against establishment Republicans like Rogers, Tea Party freshmen pushed Congress to embrace a $2.1 trillion deficit deal in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The law brought $900 billion in upfront cuts by imposing spending caps for the next decade. It also created a bipartisan “supercommitee” tasked with creating a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction deal by the end of 2011. But the supercommittee failed when Republicans refused to budge on revenue increases that Democrats demanded, triggering sequestration’s automatic, across-the-board cuts.
The irony is that the cuts under sequestration, that great fiscal equalizer, are hitting both the best and worst of the spending that Rogers has supported, whether it’s pure pork or critical social services.
The fifth district’s economic woes make it clear that hundreds of millions in specially designated funds haven’t been enough to wean this place away from the twin pillars of coal and government aid.
That’s been deeply frustrating to eastern Kentucky residents who’ve seen lawmakers like Rogers bring in huge-dollar projects while economic opportunities have evaporated. “I’m getting the hell out of Harlan County. Ain’t nothing here,” one jobless miner said, sitting in the town’s unemployment office. “What pisses me off—the politicians, they have millions of dollars pumped through here in the last 50 years.
Federal grants for many of Rogers’s pet projects haven’t been renewed since earmarks died and austerity was reborn. But money has also dried up for Meals on Wheels, which is delivering 500 fewer lunches every month in Harlan County under sequestration, according to one employee. The cuts have squeezed Title I education funding to the local high school, which laid off teachers this summer. Fewer homebound seniors are getting help to pay their bills and do their laundry.

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

An elderly man waits as volunteers from the Harlan Community Action Agency help build him a wheelchair ramp as part of their annual day of service in the southeastern region of Kentucky.

Like other coal-state lawmakers, Rogers believes the first priority is to stop Obama’s “war on coal,” lobbying against regulations like the EPA’s new carbon rules for power plants. Though the president isn’t likely to budge on his climate regulations, he promised in June to “give special care to people and communities that are unsettled by the transition” to cleaner energy. But so far, little extra help has arrived in eastern Kentucky. Even environmentalists who’ve rallied for the end of coal acknowledge that the human cost of the transition has been too high. “I find it unconscionable that these areas that have powered our rise to the greatest economy in the world are being left behind,” said Matt Wasson, director of programs at Appalachian Voices.
Rogers has found some common cause with Democrats by trying to bring the bacon home again—at least a slice of it. Together with Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, Rogers backed a $5.2 million emergency federal grant for retraining laid-off miners. And he is one of the few Republicans to push back against his own party on sequestration and the GOP’s insistence on low spending levels even if the cuts are reversed.
“I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration—and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts—must be brought to an end,” he said in July after House Republicans could not bring themselves to vote for the very cuts they had originally agreed to make to transportation and housing, scuttling his committee’s spending bill.
Not all Republicans agree—even those representing Kentucky. At an August town hall in Harlan, Sen. Rand Paul hadn’t even heard of the $5.2 million retraining program that helped Donnie Reeves.
“It’s not about retraining—it’s about cutting the deficit,” Paul said. “We should spend what money comes in.”
At the event, one resident asked Paul how sequestration would affect his employer, the Center for Independent Living, which uses federal funds to help elderly and disabled residents take care of themselves.
“Our government is literally littered with waste,” Paul replied.
Andrew Saylor, who’d posed the question, was incredulous. “I’m in charge of accounting, and we account for every damn thing,” he replied. Paul moved onto the next question.
—
Donnie didn’t want to accept the money at first. “It hurts your pride.”
Then Tiffanie laid out two years of tax returns. “This is what we paid in,” she said, showing her husband what he paid in after working 13-hour shifts.
He signed up for unemployment within a week. “It’s a joke, but it helps,” he explained. But sequestration would still cut his federal benefits if he didn’t find a job by October—extra help that’s going to end for everyone come January.

Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC

An exhibit at the Portal 31 Museum devoted to the coal mining industry in Lynch, KY. A series of animatronic figures narrate the history of coal in the region.

Donnie doesn’t romanticize the job he’s lost. Working on the mountainside, he and the other miners ran enormous, earth-smashing machines–the kind that split one coworker in half and took off another’s head. They all ragged on each other just to keep their nerves in check. “Once you see somebody get killed two or three times, you find the Lord real fast,” he said.
But Donnie believes he’s luckier than some other miners—the guys with diabetes, arthritis, and nerve pain who are too old to be retrained, too young for Social Security. (“Never tell your age—never, ever,” a career counselor told two jobless 50-somethings in Harlan.)
Sequestration isn’t making that transition easier. Already, it’s slashed federal support to Harlan’s Workforce Investment Program by 16%. That money could have paid for travel, equipment, and tuition for Harlan’s unemployed who want to retool for another profession. But it won’t be coming back unless Congress decides otherwise.
Donnie’s no Obama fan, but he doesn’t think it’s worth cutting what little Washington is doing to help. “Say they cut that [retraining] program down. A guy gets laid off today—we can help him write a resume but can’t do anything else. It’s useless.”
In late September, he saw that investment pay off: After more than six months of searching, he landed a job at a factory doing industrial maintenance, which he trained for over the summer with government assistance. It’s three hours away, which means living apart from his family until they move to Georgetown, Kentucky—but it’s a job.
Rogers says he’s committed to finding a future for his district, announcing a summit with Gov. Beshear to find new solutions to Appalachia’s economic woes—a promise that Kentucky politicians have made for decades.
But Harlan is still waiting for its own backup plan. Past boarded-up stores, pawnshops, and an abandoned tattoo parlor, a new pizza parlor sells alcohol and memories. The walls of Portal are lined with maps of old coal camps and black-and-white photos of miners.
Every night, it plays the same song to close:
           In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky.
           That’s the place where I trace my bloodline.
           And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone.
           You will never leave Harlan alive.
Click here to view more images from Kentucky and life under austerity.

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