Environment, Public Safety | Daily Report

Flickr photo by D'Arcy Norman

El Dorado County has agreed to spend around $7 million to clean up a polluted and abandoned garbage dump outside the city of South Lake Tahoe.

The settlement, announced last week, is the result of claims filed against the county by the U.S Justice Department and U.S. Forest Service to clean up the Meyers Landfill site.

The site is a former garbage dump located on National Forest System lands. It was used as a landfill site between 1946 and 1971. El Dorado County held permits from 1955 until the site closed.

Toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, were detected below the site in the early 1990s. In 1996, the Forest Service found these chemicals downstream in Saxon Creek, a tributary of Lake Tahoe.

The Forest Service turned to the Superfund law to get it cleaned up, and in 2001, filed litigation against El Dorado County and the city of South Lake Tahoe.

The settlement requires that the county construct an impermeable cap over the site, keeping as much rain and snow out as possible. It is water that carries the chemicals into groundwater.

Gerry Silva, director of El Dorado’s Environmental Management Department, said capping the 10-acre landfill should be finished by the end of the summer. Already, the county has contracted a project engineer and construction company to begin the work.

The Forest Service will monitor and supervise the project with the county.

“We are excited for construction to begin on the ground,” said Eli Ilano, deputy forest supervisor of the Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, in a statement. “This project will provide for the long-term protection of public health and safety and water quality in the Lake Tahoe Basin.”

The settlement, which was lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, in Sacramento, is subject to a 30-day public comment period. It must also be approved by the federal court.