Landfill foes band together to fight project

Paige Cool knows it is no daunting task to take on a powerful state agency and come out on top.
But she and dozens of her neighbors who live off Wildlife Lane, a rural eastside community nestled near the Withlacoochee State Forest, are doing just that. They have banded together to fight a company from building a privately owned construction and debris landfill on their street.

And next week, they should learn whether their crusade is successful.

"I don't care what we have to do, we're going to beat them," Cool said. "It is plain wrong. Common sense tells you, you don't put a landfill in a place surrounded by 60 percent of state forest."
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection will take proposed agency action on the Croom Construction and Demolition Debris landfill application by Feb. 19, according to Ana Gibbs, the DEP's external affairs manager.

Gibbs said Thursday the agency will rule on whether to grant a permit for a solid waste operation to the project applicant and landowner, Randy Yoho, of Out of Bounds Inc.
The DEP has already said that it would base its decision solely on environmental rules and regulations and does not take into consideration the proximity of homes.

Depending on what the DEP decides, this could end an 18-month saga that started when it was announced that the proposed construction and debris landfill was earmarked for about 26 acres at the site, about two miles west of Interstate 75.

Since then, many of the neighbors and interested parties formed an e-mail chain to keep each other abreast of the situation. That chain has since grown to about 100 strong, Cool said.
Cool refers to the Internet-savvy group as "an army of neighbors" all fighting to keep their serene lifestyle.

The neighbors are concerned about the loss of rural tranquility, potential noise pollution, danger to the aquifer and increased traffic from dump-trucks hauling debris to the proposed landfill.
Cool, who owns a horse-boarding business less than a mile from the proposed landfill, said she would probably be forced to close if the state allows it.

"Who would put up with the smell and the traffic?" she said.
The group has also kept the county in its e-mail correspondence. However, there is little the county can do because the majority of the property was zoned for a landfill back in 1998, and the applicant has a prior court settlement backing him up.

Should the private company wish to use more property than is already allowable, than that portion would have to be rezoned and the matter would go before planning and zoning commissioners.