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position that local standards may be more stringent than the state’s,” the director said.
“The state never tells local government what to do!” Ms. Bailey joked, when asked by Loudoun Supervisor Andrew R. Bird if her department would grant a landfill permit over a locality’s objections. “Under current regulations, the Department of Waste Management can’t issue a landfill permit without notification from local government that the landfill complies with local land use ordinances. I don’t see that changing.”
John McCarthy, Rappahannock County’s zoning administrator, asked what the relationship will be between the Department of Waste Management in Richmond and its regional consultants in the field, noting that often the regional consultants “are not in tune with Richmond or Richmond’s not in tune with them.”
The department is looking to expand its regional offices, and will divide responsibilities, with Richmond handling the issuance of landfill permits and the people in the field concentrating on inspection and enforcement, Ms. Bailey said.
“You find a site and you think you’re going to acquire it for a landfill. How long will it take to get the site permitted?” asked Fauquier County Administrator Steve Crosby.
“If you have five years of capacity left in your landfill, you should start looking NOW for a new site,” Ms. Bailey replied. “If you have a site already, probably two years. . . The actual permitting won’t take that long,” but “citizen opposition, jostling” may delay the process, she said, adding that the draft regulations require a year of baseline groundwater sampling before operations can begin at a new landfill.
Asked if Virginia will follow the West Virginia governor’s lead and ban out-of-state debris from its “stump dumps,” Ms. Bailey said that U.S. Supreme Court decisions “seem to say” this type of out-of-jurisdiction prohibition is unconstitutional. And if it’s not unconstitutional, it’s at least “touchy” since much of Virginia’s hazardous waste is handled by a neighboring state, she added. “It’s not under consideration.”
Ms. Bailey’s final word on the future of solid waste management in Virginia might have sent local officials home to check the life of their landfills and the'balance in their general funds: “It’s going to cost us a fortune,” she predicted.
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