Charleston County landfill investigating high ammonia levels detected
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) — Charleston County landfill officials are working to identify the source of high levels of ammonia detected during an annual monitoring report.
The Bees Ferry Landfill, located at 1344 Bees Ferry Road, passed inspections for the past two years. But during the 2025 annual monitoring event for the stormwater program, analytical monitoring detected an elevated concentration for ammonias in the landfill’s runoff.
The inspection resulted in a violation notice from the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services on Dec. 1 because of ammonia, a common toxic substance derived from wastes, fertilizers and natural processes. A review of a discharge monitoring report from September 2025 revealed one of the stormwater outputs had an ammonia level of 30.4 milligrams per liter. The safe limit is 10 mg/L.
Landfills are usually a source of the toxic substance. It can be toxic if inhaled or ingested in high concentrations.
Charleston County Environmental Management Director Thomas Cue, who is the owner of the landfill, says the most challenging step is finding the source.
“If we’re going to be totally fair about everything, we have our belief of what it might be, but this very possibly could be coming from off-site, so we have to investigate all that,” Cue says. “It is ongoing right now, and when the results are in, of course, DES will be filled in, and you’ll know about it.”
Cue says a rain event that preceded the stormwater monitoring event was substantial, which caused some erosion to the landfill’s stormwater monitoring structures, otherwise known as berms.
Since the berm had been eroded, stormwater went directly into the sediment basin, which means the bypass of the potentially ammonia-impacted stormwater from the composting area to the stormwater discharge may have contributed to the high amounts.
However, the investigation is still underway.
“The berm has been restored since the event, and site personnel have continued to inspect and address structural integrity of the stormwater conveyance system,” Cue says. “Quarterly stormwater monitoring will continue at the site as required by the permit, and the site will include ammonia in the sampling analytical suite in future monitoring events.”
He says they are following Department of Environmental Services guidance and have submitted an action plan, including increased monitoring as the search for the source continues.
As the investigation of the ammonia spike is ongoing, leaders say the spike originating from outside the landfill footprint is still a possibility.
This comes after the landfill has been operating much better in the last year after years of violations. The landfill had previously failed several inspections from the state’s health department and finally passed in 2023 under new management. They had failed or had violations for controlling litter, application of soil cover and compactors being down.
Nathan Haynes is the Bees Ferry Landfill operations manager and has been with the landfill under previous management. He says that when the management changed, things started to roll in the right direction and there has been a commitment to pleasing the communities around them.
He says crews actively look for seepage that could explain the shource and they report them if they see them.
“The immediate action is to get the machines, the equipment, the operators over there,” he says. “We figure out what’s leaking, fix it, create some grass seed, move on to the next one. When something does come up, it’s immediately.”
While there was a spike in ammonia, inspections of the landfill did not identify any uncontrolled toxic liquid substances that could have impacted the local stormwater environment.
“With the landfill, things happen all the time, but we are very proactive and we are very reactive also because as soon as something does happen that we didn’t see, we immediately go right to it,” Cue says.
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