Landfill Impacts: Preserving Neighborhoods & the Environment

We help citizens protect their home, neighborhood, and environment from the impact of poorly conceived landfills, incinerators, transfer stations, and other waste facilities.  Whether you're concerned about an existing or proposed facility, we can help in three ways. 

Free Advice By Phone: We'd be delighted to answer any specific questions you have regarding a waste facility.  Just give us a call (toll-free) at 1-800-773-4571. Advice by phone is always available free of charge to those seeking to preserve their home and neighborhood from harm.

Free Plans Review: We can conduct an initial review of facility plans for obvious, potential impacts.  We can then suggest possible technical solutions for each impact and suggest strategies for ensuring that the project is not approved until each solution is fully adopted.  For those facilities where impacts cannot be resolved, we can suggest how you can research possible strategy options for preventing the facility from opening.

Detailed Analysis of Strategy Options: If you find you lack the time to research strategy options on your own, then we can carry out an Initial Strategy Analysis (ISA).  Of course the purpose of the ISA is to determine the quickest, least expensive strategy for resolving your concerns.  Generally, the ISA costs $1,000 to $3,000 and can be completed in two weeks.  An example of an ISA can be viewed by clicking the following link:

• Brownville Rubble Landfill - Strategy Analysis Example

Following is a bit more background on the CEDS philosophy and approach regarding waste facilities. 

While we need a place to put materials which cannot be recycled or reused, the benefits of a landfill can come at a tremendous cost to nearby residents and the environment.  Though technological advances make the landfill of today safer than those of the past, the added safeguards are by no means foolproof much less universally applied.

If a landfill has been proposed for a site within four miles of your home or in the watershed of a stream, lake, or other aquatic resource you value, then we urge you to aggressively pursue the following quality of life protection measures:

1. Ensure that strategies for minimizing the need for another landfill (reduce, recycle, and  reuse) being aggressively pursued;
2. Assuming full use of waste reduction strategies, is another landfill truly needed;
3. Make certain that all reasonable sites have been considered and that the proposed location truly is the best; and
4. Carefully scrutinize the design, operation plan, and long term care to ensure that the landfill causes the least impact possible.

The following two publications illustrate the approach advocated by CEDS to ensure that the preceding measures are achieved.

• Brownville Rubble Landfill - Strategy Analysis Example

• Citizen Perspectives on Siting Solid Waste Facilities

Additionally, the CEDS Project Evaluation Checklist allows you to assess the quality of life effects of many types of proposed development activities.  A number of the impacts listed in the checklist are applicable to landfills, such as air quality, environmental justice, fire, groundwater degradation, historic places, light trespass, noise, odors, property value, traffic, and water pollution.   Detail on how to review a project for these potential impacts can be found in Part I of our free 300-page book How To Win Land Development Issues.  Strategies for defeating a poorly conceived landfill project can be found in Part III.

CEDS is a nationwide network of attorneys, planners, environmental scientists, traffic engineers, political strategists, fundraisers, and other professionals.  We help people with concerns about all types of landfills (municipal, construction-demolition debris, land clearing debris, stump dumps, rubble, etc).  We also help those living near existing and closed landfills to reduce facility impacts. 

To learn how we can help with the landfill of concern to you, just give us a call toll-free at 1-800-773-4571. Advice by phone is always available free of charge to those seeking to preserve their home and neighborhood from harm. You can also email us at info@ceds.org.

Our Mission: To help citizens win Smart Growth victories.