OXFORD – Department of Environmental Protection specialist Bill Butler confirmed Friday that the town is out of compliance on required quarterly monitoring for methane at its transfer station.
He said he told Town Manager Mike Huston last November about the need for the monitoring when a meeting was held to fine-tune details of a new operations manual for the transfer station.
Huston acknowledged Monday any mention of the need for quarterly monitoring “may have passed me by” at the November meeting, and did not get written into the final rules. But he added, “If they want a quarterly test, that’s what we’ll do.”
The issue was raised by Solid Waste Committee member Lois Pike at a recent selectmen’s meeting.
Huston has since asked a member of the town’s rescue squad to research costs for installing a methane-monitoring chip into a monitor the town already uses for measuring carbon dioxide at fire scenes.
He did not know what the cost would be. “I have no clue, and I’m not going to speculate. I’m not interested in creating a controversy,” he said.
Butler said the need for monitoring was “one of the bare-bones safety issues” in the state’s solid waste rules, because methane, while odorless and colorless, can be extremely explosive.
Monitoring is required whenever a building is located within 100 feet of a closed landfill. The town’s two transfer station buildings are well within that limit. At one point they are 20 to 30 feet from the landfill, which was closed in the 1980s, he said.
If tests show methane gas is seeping through the ground and getting into the station, Butler said, the town would be required to install explosion-proof fans and let them run for a few minutes before anyone went into the building.
Butler said the town’s operations manual is a “pretty critical” document to Transfer Station Director Randy Pike and employee Bert Tibbetts. It defines the rules they must follow. He added, “It’s important they don’t get stonewalled, or told there’s no money” to meet the manual’s minimum standards.
Huston said the operations manual will need to be revised to reflect the need for methane monitoring.
Pike said she raised the issue because there’s little chance for ventilation in the basement of the transfer station, and she was concerned the town would get fined if it didn’t do it.
“Honest to God, this is not such a big deal. We have a monitor, all we needed was a chip,” Pike said. “And we knew from the word go that we had to do it.”
Butler understands that the town faced major unforeseen costs when a state inspection found asbestos there last summer. But if the town does not meet the minimum standards of the operations manual, he said, “It could ultimately lead to enforcement. You can’t develop an operations manual based on your ability to fund it.”
ggeraghty@sunjournal.com
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