NC’s largest landfill agrees to slash odors, forever chemical contamination

North Carolina’s largest landfill intends to take steps to prevent contamination of nearby communities and stem greenhouse gas pollution, the result of an agreement with a Sampson County environmental group.

Under a proposed agreement with the Environmental Justice Community Action Network, GFL will install treatment systems to significantly reduce forever chemicals leaking from its Sampson County Landfill in Roseboro, N.C., into groundwater and surface water. The company also agreed to use drone technology to sense methane emissions from the facility and work with a third-party consultant to develop an air monitoring network around the facility.

GFL also agreed to make air monitoring results available on a public website. That site will include a feature allowing members of the nearby Snow Hill Community to submit complaints about odors and other impacts from the landfill.

“This at least allows the residents to know more about what’s going on at the landfill. At least there will be some transparency,” Sherri White-Williamson, EJCAN’s executive director, told The News & Observer.

GFL did not respond to a request for comment.

The Sampson County Landfill opened in 1973, covering about 20 acres. It has steadily expanded to nearly 1,000 acres, with some sections closing as they are filled with construction debris and trash hauled in from across central and eastern North Carolina while new cells open up to meet the waste demands of an ever-growing state.

About 500 people live within a two-mile radius of the landfill, according to a complaint the Southern Environmental Law Center filed on EJCAN’s behalf in late August. Those residents often depend on well water as their drinking water supply and have seen their quality of life diminished as the landfill has steadily expanded, the complaint alleges.

Each year, the landfill accepts more than 1.8 million tons of waste. That waste includes trash from residents across the Triangle, but also industrial refuse.

The landfill’s customer list has at times included some of the state’s most well-known users of forever chemicals, including the Fayetteville Works plant owned by DuPont and then Chemours.

Between 1995 and 2018, the complaint alleges, the landfill accepted as much as 17.5 tons of sludge from Fayetteville Works each week. Chemicals distinctly associated with the Fayetteville Works facility have been found at very high levels in groundwater sampled at the landfill.

The consent decree was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. A federal judge must approve the agreement, which could happen as soon as late October.

Forever chemical contamination from the landfill

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, are at the center of EJCAN’s complaint against the landfill.

The environmental group alleged that GFL’s failure to manage the class of synthetic compounds in its groundwater streams has caused levels of the chemicals to spike in Bearskin Swamp, a fishing stream that runs along the landfill’s eastern edge.

Samples taken in tributaries to Bearskin Swamp have found levels of PFAS measuring 3,754 parts per trillion and nearly 8,000 ppt. Samples taken upstream of the landfill contain significantly lower levels of PFAS.

The group also alleged that failures to properly manage landfill gas have resulted in PFAS emissions, potentially contaminating nearby wells and surface water.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality sampled well water at homes within 2,000 feet of the landfill in late 2023 and early 2024. The state agency found levels of forever chemicals PFOA or PFOS above the EPA’s new drinking water standard at 14 of those 30 homes.

Managing a landfill also means managing the waste-laden water that accumulates around and under it, known as leachate.

DEQ sampling has found extremely high levels of PFAS in leachate at the Sampson County Landfill. In 2023, DEQ detected PFAS levels of 1,422,796 ppt in leachate at the open section of the landfill and 727,368 ppt at the closed section.

GFL has used several methods to manage this leachate, and the complaint alleged that all of them resulted in PFAS being transported offsite.

One of those, a gravity groundwater intercept, is a series of pipes and pumps that is used to lower water levels underneath the landfill, discharging directly into Bearskin Swamp.

Previously, the landfill used a gas-fired evaporator to heat water that was coming off of the landfill, sending it into the atmosphere. That system stopped operating in 2022, though, and the landfill started sending its leachate to wastewater treatment plants.

“For a decade, while the Landfill’s leachate evaporator was operating, it evaporated millions of gallons of this highly-concentrated, PFAS-laden leachate into the atmosphere,” the environmental groups’ complaint said. Similarly, the groups alleged, flares for landfill gas did not burn hot enough to destroy PFAS

GFL is seeking a water discharge permit from DEQ to treat its leachate onsite using a reverse osmosis system that would capture contaminants before discharging treated water into the Little Coharie River.

Under the terms of the consent decree, GFL agreed to seek a special order by consent with DEQ that would limit the levels of certain PFAS compounds in its groundwater intercept system to the drinking water standards issued by the EPA earlier this year. GFL also agreed to seek those EPA drinking water standards as the enforceable limit for some PFAS from its proposed reverse osmosis system.

“When they get the (water discharge) permit and then there’s a violation or there are exceedances in the discharge as it’s monitored, then that’s another opportunity to go back to the court and ask them to make GFL get back into compliance,” White-Williamson said.

Looking forward with settlement funds

Under the agreement, GFL also agreed to set up a community fund for the residents of Snow Hill. Residents of the community will decide how the money is spent, White-Williamson said, and the money will be managed by a separate third party that is still being decided.

The amount of the community fund was not publicly available, as details are included in a separate confidential agreement. A press release from SELC and EJCAN said its use could include funding hookups to public water supplies or providing residents with filters that are capable of removing PFAS from drinking water supplies.

“This agreement with GFL to address toxic PFAS pollution, meaningfully investigate and address emissions from the landfill, and fund community-led remediation efforts provides crucial relief and empowers the Snow Hill community to repair and look forward,” Maia Hutt, an SELC attorney who represented EJCAN, said in the press release.

White-Williamson made clear that EJCAN will not manage the money or play a hand in deciding how it is spent.

“The only people that will benefit from that community fund will be Snow Hill community members,” White-Williamson said.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here .