- Zoom participants + 35+ attendees in-person
- Meeting opened with Julie Runkle, Environmental Services Director, Rice County
- She provided a timeline:
- Fire began May 22, 2023, 4 pm
- 6:30 pm: Focus on containing fire from spreading to another cell
- Firebreak held throughout the night
- Cell was 1.75-2 acres in size
- Tuesday
- Closed to the public on Tuesday
- Suppressants used included water and soil
- Partners engaged: County Highway Department, Fire department
- Communicated with MPCA throughout the day of Tuesday
- Ordered air quality equipment on Tuesday, though it was not required by MPCA
- One reason operators could not spread dirt over whole fire area was very low visibility due to smoke
- Wednesday
- Shifting wind allowed them to cover other active areas
- Air monitoring equipment arrived. These were personal air monitors for workers to use
- Fire Department personnel from Lonsdale, Northfield, and Faribault all came at 5 pm to knock down hillside and put out active fire
- 70,000 gallons of water brought in from Dundas
- Thursday
- Due to wind direction, staff unable to work within most of hte active burn area
- Consultation with EPA landfill fire expert, State Fire Marshall, NAFR, MPCA
- Arranged private soil hauling, rental of 2nd dozer, and additional operators from highway
- Friday
- Ongoing earthwork to suppress fire
- Continued with licensed private haulers bringing in soil, moving soil
- Still closed to public
- Sheriff department monitoring periodically throughout
- Challenge: the area was so large, and trucks had to move so slowly and carefully, that it took many truck loads to cover
- By end of day Friday, 80% of smoldering was covered by dirt
- Private haulers decided to stop working after a certain point on holiday weekend (Q: What were we paying? Could we have paid more?)
- Air Quality
- Canadian wildfires and ozone impacted air quality even before the landfill fire
- Shortage of air quality supplies across the country impacted availability. Most air quality equipment is in Ohio, due to the incident there.
- Lab turnaround time was more than 6 days.
- Risks: Carbon monoxide is the highest risk
- Results have only just come back now
- Staff did go out to residences with handheld unit at 57 residential units to test air within 1 mile of landfill. Two parcels on one day that had results above standard
- Cause: Unknown
- Common causes of fire
- ashes, embers, charcoal — if it’s not 100% totally out when put in a bag and into a bin, it can flame up once it gets air when dumped out in the landfill.
- lithium batteries (eg: laptop batteries, scooter and hoverboards, cell phones)
- spontaneously combustible materials, eg stain rags, etc
- Call to action: Never throw away anything combustible, especially batteries
- Next steps: have to assess damage to liner, but cannot do this until the fire is fully out, and there are still hot spots below the soil.
- Education
- If there is a smoldering load, Rice Co will go back to the source to talk with them about what went wrong, how to correct
- Work with MPCA to have at-the-ready resource packets to disseminate to residents when fires occur
- Questions and Answers
- Question: Integrative contingency plan (ICP) — did the landfill have one?
- Answer: Yes, do have one. Did cover fire incidents. Runkle said they had a plan in place and followed the plan, however the way the fire developed was specific and unique. But yet, Rice Co will revisit the ICP plan and ensure it’s as effective as possible.
- Question: What did we learn from the June 2021 fire?
- Answer: That was like a traditional landfill fire, a big bowl that could be put out with water. The active dump sites were different.
- Note that the dump site where the fire happened this year was an oddly shaped area that the county was trying to use to expand the landfill and make it last longer, and the expansion site was not designed to contain fire.
- Question about what toxins were in the smoke plume and ash dispersal and on properties around the landfill
- Answer: It’s hard, because there’s no clear baseline. There was not air quality monitoring during the first two days. It’s a household landfill, not an industrial landfill, so there is a difference there in terms of toxins. This seemed like it happened for a long time, but it doesn’t constitute a long-term exposure.
- Question: How do we validate that we don’t have heavy metals in the ash, post-event?
- Answer: Runkle talked to EPA and they have guidance, which Rice Co has evaluated for dangers to crops, and EPA felt like Rice Co’s messaging was fine.
- Question: Do you see heavy metals leaching from the landfill?
- Answer: Yes, at a rate comparable to other household use landfills
- Question: Is there a liner under the saddle, where this landfill cell was being built?
- Question from a resident who farms just below the landfill, and it seems like there is more debris than usual. Why?
- Answer: More wind from the south this year, spreading more debris. They cover it, but sometimes when the truck dumps, stuff flies before they cover it.
- Question: Also why is there so much trash from the landfill in the Cannon River Wilderness Area?
- Answer: There is a 12 ft high litter fence that goes over the fence. Acknowledge there is going to be wind-blown litter. The best thing people can do is not throw away plastic bags or paper litter.
- Used to have a team from EPIC coming to help pick up, but this year there aren’t enough crew leaders.
- Question: Brad came to the resident’s farm on Friday. But there was radio silence leading up to that point. What could be done better next time?
- Answer: Yes, County can do better in the future. They did get press releases out, but residents don’t always know where press releases go or how to find them. They did create a special webpage to address this.
- Question: What are we supposed to do with wind-blown debris on resident property?
- Answer: If there’s a specific event, resident can call and County will try to help
- Question: Resident lives next to the landfill. What fire barriers separate dump from wilderness park? How would you put out a fire in the wilderness park or adjacent properties?
- Answer: All active areas are on the west side of landfill. Filled landfills that are closed are a barrier. Recycling building has a barrier around it and the fire department could address it.
- Question/comment: Two fires in two years is a lot. Would like to see a more established barrier between the landfill and the public and private land around the landfill. Would also like to see the integrative contingency plan (ICP) be public.
- Question: How am I going to know if I can eat the chickens in my chicken house, vegetables from my garden, if the ash fell on my property? And is the groundwater contaminated?
- Answer: Will not continue to use the cell until the County can determine whether the liner is damaged. And in the meanwhile it will take a while for anything to get to groundwater. And there is a water monitoring and detection system to help determine if there is a leak from the liner. Regarding heavy metals in soil, it’s hard to know, because there may be heavy metals in the soil already.
- Question: If there’s no baseline now, should you take a baseline so you have one going forward?
- Answer: There’s no good way to get a baseline that will be relevant, because environmental events are continually happening, such as a shed fire with 70 tires — that will impact the soil, as well.
- Comment: I don’t care if it’s the fire that caused it, it would be nice if the county tested our soil.
- Answer: You can test your soil. But it’s not a good idea for the county to pay for it — it’s a slippery slope — then everyone will want their soil tested for free.
- Questions: Are there any fines coming down from MPCA and EPA that taxpayers will have to cover?
- Answer: Not that we know of.
- Question: What are your plans for ongoing communication via the website with data that comes in, next steps, etc.?
- Answer: Will keep the website updated. Will do press releases, which go to newspapers, radio stations, cities, and townships.
- Question: How could the smoke have been okay to breathe?
- Answer: No smoke is healthy to breathe. They weren’t testing for particulates. They were just testing for toxic gasses.
- Comment: We didn’t understand what he meant when he said the air was good — it wasn’t good — it just didn’t have the stuff you were testing for.
- Question: You needed lots of soil on site to suppress this. Do you have a plan to have more soil on site in the future?
- Answer: We had and have enough soil on site
- Question: This cell made it difficult to access and suppress fire. What will you do differently to not repeat this?
- Answer: There was not a road all the way around the cell because there was a law enforcement search going on when it was created that prevented that. In the future, there will be access to every side. County did a debrief, and they did discuss how to ensure there is road access all the way around.
- Question: Rice Co used to have emergency text messages. Does a landfill fire not count as an emergency?
- They didn’t consider that option, but have discussed it. If they had needed to evacuate people, they would have used it.
- Question: Any planning for thermal imaging monitoring, or staff monitoring, to catch these fires sooner?
- Answer: Costs escalate when you go to 24 hour monitoring. But with technology maybe there is a thermal imaging solution.
- Question: Can leach aid from the leach ponds support fire suppressant?
- Answer: The leach ponds are not big enough to support doing this in any significant way.
- Question: 40 years ago Rice Co debated having a garbage incinerator vs a landfill. The argument back then was we couldn’t clean the exhaust well enough to use an incinerator. But now we’re burying batteries that can explode. The landfill can only last so much longer. Is it time for a plan b?
- Answer: We did a feasibility study 15 yrs ago, but it wasn’t cost effective because there isn’t enough scale here. Waste diversion goals should be part of the solution — lots of funding from the state coming soon. 18 years of lifespan left on the landfill.
