By a 4-3 vote, with Commissioner Fred Brummer and Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs leading the charge, the Orange County Commission said no Tuesday June 4th to 7 waivers and special exceptions that would have been necessary to expand a landfill in the Wekiva Springshed.

Audubon had helped enact a prohibition in the county code to prohibit landfills and landfill expansions in the Wekiva area subsequent to the 2004 Wekiva Parkway and Protection Act legislation.

Audubon Florida Director of Advocacy Charles L ee helped organize testimony against the landfill, and made a powerpoint presentation to the County Commission.

The landfill expansion would be located in the darkest purple area (highest recharge) on the Wekiva Springshed Recharge map.

A principle argument against the proposal was contamination risk to the Spring.

Hubbard Construction and Mid Florida Mining & Materials (a Hubbard subsidiary) wanted to convert an old Construction and Demolition Material landfill on Golden Gem Road to a Class III facility which could accept everything except household garbage. Hubbard promised a long list of environmental safeguards. However, a majority of the Orange County Commission saw through the rhetoric and detected the fact that the liners would be discontinuous, would only be placed on part of the site, would be only a “cap” on other parts of the site, and that the cap liners would not be installed for many years. Finally, they saw that the attempt to fit the old C&D landfill with liners would merely dump the leachate water back into the aquifer through the retention pond system on the site.

Commissioner Fred Brummer pointed out that there was another Class III landfill with 40 years of capacity at Keene Rd. just 7 miles away, which has a full liner & leachate control system.

The City of Apopka strongly opposed the landfill and presented testimony to the County Commission, delivered by City Commissioners Joe Kilsheimer and Tallahassee attorney Dan Stengel.

Regardless of a county staff recommendation of approval and DEP approval of permits for this site, a majority of the Commission saw the importance of enforcing the presumptive prohibition on new landfills and landfill expansions in the Wekiva Area.

Please click here for coverage of this issue from the Apopka Chief.

Wekiva from Scott Taylor on Vimeo.