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Dump Truck Traffic, Alleged Soil Contamination Top Resident Concerns With Royster Project
Last Updated: December 22, 2011
Questions over a continuous stream of dump trucks traveling over Town roads and alleged contaminated soil being stockpiled at Nora Pit were at the fore of discussion during the December 19 Board meeting.
The primary concern being Cottage Grove based R.G. Huston Company’s transport of dump truck loads of soil from the old Royster-Clark fertilizer warehouse site on Cottage Grove Road just east of U.S. Highway 51 in Madison to Nora Pit. Huston Company is contracted to remove the soil and replace it with sand extracted from Nora Pit, east of County Highway N, and now Skaar Pit, at U.S. Highway 12 and 18 and County Highway N. Huston representatives were at the meeting to acquire an overdue metallic mining permit—which was granted by the Board—but once there they and he Board met a flurry of neighbors’ questions concerning the Royster project.
Uphoff Road resident Betty Devine was the first to speak of the approximately 10 concerned residents who came to the meeting. Her initial comments dealt with what she felt was the Board’s lack of oversight regarding what she said was “contaminated soil” being stored by Huston at its Nora Pit grounds.
“I’m just a little concerned why the Town was not involved with this whole DNR dumping contaminated soil business,” said Devine. “Wouldn’t the Town be interested in protecting its residents?”
Explaining that regulation of this type was beyond the Town’s capabilities, Town Chairman Kris Hampton said that this was a matter best managed by the Wisconsin DNR. “They have the expertise. We don’t have a laboratory testing facility.”
Huston Company Senior Engineer Dennis Richardson explained that the DNR, Dane County Land Conservation and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection are overseeing the project daily. While Devine questioned the use of the nonmetallic mining permit at Nora Pit for material dumping, Richardson explained that it wasn’t dumping but land spreading. Land spreading, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, is a process of spreading the contaminated soil into the existing farm soils with the objective of disposing the waste in a manner that preserves the subsoil's chemical, biological, and physical properties by limiting the accumulation.
“There will be land spreading there for the project,” said Richardson. “Whatever is allowed by Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection and the DNR. So if the weather doesn’t allow for spreading right now because it’s got to be incorporated they are allowing us to stockpile—put plastic down and stockpile, wrap that with a straw waddle so if something does run off it hits that waddle, and the piles are being coated with polymer for erosion control.”
Devine’s claims of the soil being contaminated with atrazine, a common chemical in fertilizers, was also countered by Richardson who explained that there was no atrazine in the soil being spread on the farmland.
“It’s mainly nitrogen and very little phosphorus,” said Richardson. There is he said a section of atrazine at the Royster site going to the landfill. He also explained that there were four or five loads of diesel contaminated soil there that along with the atrazine loads would be going to a Dane County landfill where it would be decontaminated. When asked during an email interview who had it right regarding atrazine contamination, DATCP Hydrologist Rick Graham said both were “sort of correct.”
As of December 20, he said, “None of the soil that has been hauled away from the Royster-Clark project (and incorporated into the fields) has had any atrazine in it at all. However, there is a small area at the property where low concentrations of atrazine were found. This area has not been remediated yet, and when it is, the soil (approximately 60 cubic yards; 3-4 truck loads) will be land-spread and incorporated into a field at less than 1/10 the label rate for atrazine. This spreading rate is low enough that no atrazine will migrate to the groundwater.”
Other concerns coming from residents involved the dump trucks being used to transport the material on Town roads. Huston Company Co-owner Dale Huston said that they are running between 15 to 19 trucks at any one time on the Town roads. Devine contested Huston on these numbers saying she had counted 30 to 40 trucks an hour traveling down Uphoff. But Huston backed his statement saying that while taking time during the day to watch the truck traffic he saw that a number of the trucks weren’t even Huston’s.
“There’s other dump trucks hauling on the roads,” he said, adding that there are corn trucks and other heavy vehicles as well. Town Supervisor Mike Kindschi, explaining that the dump trucks weren’t the only heavy vehicles traveling Town roads, said that loaded garbage trucks using Town roads weigh a large burden as well.
Video of Vilas, Nora, Laudon, Coffeytown and Uphoff roads were taken by Huston Company prior to the project and given to the Town as a record in case road damage is realized from the truck traffic and repair reimbursement from Huston is needed. If other Town roads were being used by Huston, Hampton reminded Huston and Richardson that video tape of those roads would be needed as well.
Richardson assured the Vilas Road residents at the meeting that truck traffic would be cut in half since they would no longer be loading sand from the Nora Pit, but rather after dumping their loads they would travel down County Highway N to Skaar Pit at U.S. Highway 12 and 18 to get a sand load before taking 12 and 18 to U.S. Highway 51 north to Cottage Grove Road and back to the Royster site. But even with the assurance of reduced traffic, many residents at the meeting who live along Vilas were still upset with the situation.
Questioning why Town roads were being used in the first place when County roads were better equipped for the heavy loads, Vilas road resident Susan Kane suggested that they take County Highway N to County Highway BB west. The primary reason for opting against this route was “haul time,” said Richardson. “It’s a shorter route going the other direction.” The county road option was also turned down before the project started after taking into account that the trucks would have to travel through the more congested Village traffic and by two schools that lie along that route. “Going through there and crossing the cross walks. There’s that potential hazard,” said Richardson. “So we feel like the roads we’re running now are more rural, not County roads but yet they are built to good standards, too.”
Trucks speeding was another issue presented by a couple residents. Town Public Works Head Jeff Smith said that police were out watching trucks on December 19 and they clocked one that was going one mile per hour over the speed limit.