Landfill-to-park: great idea, or toxic legacy?

Raleigh tries to turn lemons into lemonade:

With the jungle gyms and slides keeping them busy, the kids playing Saturday at Wake County's newest park didn't take much notice of the giant, grassy hill nearby.

But the park's namesake hill, and the 5 million tons of trash it took to build it, are exactly what sets it apart.

These conversions have been all the rage for the last 2-3 decades, and communities have embraced them all across the country. But are they really as safe as we'd like to believe?

Precautionary measures like these might give us a clue:

The park features sparkling rest rooms and brand-new playground equipment, but is missing one traditional piece of American park equipment: barbecue grills.

Because of the methane in the area, officials decided against installing grills near the picnic shelter, said Chris Snow, Wake County director of parks, recreation and open space. Smoking and open flames are banned.

"We're just trying to play it safe," Snow said, adding that methane would need to be in a confined area to ignite. Grills may be added later.

I would say that's fairly wise, especially considering what happened in Charlotte not too long ago:

Two years ago at a converted landfill called Renaissance Park in Charlotte, North Carolina, a soccer mom went after a stray ball that had fallen into an eroded hole around a light pole. To see in the shadows, she pulled out a pocket lighter. An exploding fireball blew her several feet back from the methane-filled hole. Fortunately, she suffered little more than minor burns and a bad case of the shakes. Signs discouraging open flames and smoking in all five of Charlotte's landfill parks were quickly posted.

Of course, any type of reclamation project like this has some possible dangers associated with it. But we also work under the assumption that those dangers are well within the realm of "acceptable", because we have so many overlapping (Federal, State and local) environment and health officials closely monitoring such. Well, that may not be the case:

Despite the scare stories, over the past 20 years hundreds of municipalities and landfill operators have fashioned closed landfills into golf courses, parks, ball fields, playgrounds, even ski slopes. There is no national tally--largely because dumps, especially closed dumps, are considered local domain. And there is little regulation. "You don't need an EPA permit to play ball on a landfill," says Allen Geswein, of the Environmental Protection Agency's office of solid waste. "And given the current political climate, I wouldn't expect any moves in that direction."

Another "assumption" that is too often made when dealing with landfills is the clear deliniation drawn between hazardous waste landfills and general-purpose ones. This comment was made by a UNC student about a park he'd like to see built over a landfill on Roanoke Island:

When the landfill was first constructed, it didn't have to be lined, Campbell said. Trash was simply dumped, compacted and covered over. But, he said, "no toxic waste was permitted, to our knowledge."

A toxicology report of the land seems to back that up, revealing that the land is "pristine under local water quality standards," he said.

Forgetting for the moment that people still throw away small batteries, electronics and toxic chemical containers, which should be handled as "hazardous waste", something like 65% of regular trash releases toxic elements as it degrades, and the combination of those elements often produces some horrific results. And an unlined landfill will (not "might") eventually leak/leach those toxins into the local groundwater.

I believe these reclamation projects have merit, but I also believe we are too easily persuaded that the dangers are inconsequential. And when the most vulnerable of our society (children) are also the ones most exposed, such a casual acceptance of such is frightening.