Unpleasant Odor: Cabarrus County residents fuming about landfill smell - Fox 46 Charlotte

Cabarrus County residents fuming about landfill smell

CABARRUS COUNTY ( QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Neighbors who live near the Charlotte Motor Speedway Landfill off Morehead Road say they’re fed up with the smell, which they believe is getting increasingly worse. In fact, it’s gotten so bad, some of them have filed complaints with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The landfill has been accepting trash since 1992, predating many of the 140 homes that sit within 1,500 feet of it. Neighbors say they knew about the landfill when they first moved in, but they say the smell only became intolerable about a year ago.

“There are days that I close my garage and I’m in my house making sure everything is just tight,” said Rachel Parton, who lives in the Rocky River Crossing community.

In a statement sent to Queen City News, Republic Services, the company that operates the landfill, said in part, “The Charlotte area had a significant rainfall event last week that briefly impacted our routine operations. We make every effort to control any potential for odor onsite, including covering waste daily, deploying misters, and investing in highly-engineered gas collection systems.”

But neighbors in the Rocky River community say that while the rain does exacerbate the smell, the stench has been there far longer than a week.

“It was last year and all of a sudden, it became a huge problem. I would get out of my car and this stench would just overwhelm me,” said Parton.

According to inspection reports from the DEQ’s Waste Management division, the landfill had violations in at least its past three inspections, conducted in Dec. 2022, Jan. 2023, and April 2023, respectively.

The reports indicate that at the end of each day, all trash must be covered in at least six inches of soil to help mitigate the odors. However, inspectors noted that was not being properly done.

Waste Management sent a letter to the landfill in April, stating that they could be fined up to $15,000 per day for each violation. DEQ’s Air Quality division also required the landfill to submit an odor mitigation plan following several citizen complaints.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. I would imagine that’s probably been happening for quite some time,” said neighbor David Sloan.

Now, neighbors say they want a clearer picture of what the landfill is doing to try to remediate the issue and a better understanding of when it will close down for good.

According to the EPA, the landfill is not estimated to close until 2034.

“When I moved in 2001, by 2011 it was going to be closed down. Now it’s 2023 and apparently, they just keep adding on and adding on and adding on those years,” said Sloan.

The landfill did submit an odor mitigation plan to the Division of Air Quality in April. It said they had already begun a construction project to collect more landfill gas and minimize emissions.