Landfill proposal rejected in 2006

Waste Management Inc. likely would have no need to build a new landfill and recycling center here in Cherokee County if its talks with Spartanburg County officials hadn't completely stalled in 2006.

The Texas-based operator of landfills and waste hauling and recycling services across the country only was lacking the signatures of four Spartanburg County council members to move forward with its plans to construct a new landfill on a 1,200 acre parcel near Enoree, and even vocal opponents of Waste Management's plans thought it was a done deal.

It wasn't, though. And published reports indicate the deal unexpectedly fell apart in March 2006 due to one main reason — the money wasn't good enough.

In many ways the situations Spartanburg County once found itself in, and the one Cherokee County finds itself in today, are very similar. In both cases, Waste Management proposed constructing landfills in corners of the counties that are very rural with low population densities. And in both cases, the company's main pitches really boil down to the bottom line.

The deal rejected by Spartanburg County could have put $251 million into the county budget over the course of 37 years or so, according to published reports.

The deal now being proposed for Cherokee County could potentially put $78 million into government budgets over the next 30 years, and save the county up to $23.4 million more if Cherokee County accepts Waste Management's offer for free garbage disposal services during the landfill's life span, according to an economic study Waste Management officials provided when they launched their public campaign here.

It's unclear if the similarities will extend beyond that, though.

Opposition to Waste Management's plans for Enoree was so well organized that it actually hired a political consultant to direct efforts. That led to an intense direct mail campaign and telephone calls to more than 3,500 voters in specific areas of the county.

"I think all of us recognized, as long as we're making trash you have to have some place to put it," said Dr. Joe Lesesne, the former president of Wofford College who served as the public face of Spartanburg County Citizens Against the Landfill. "We didn't feel like it's illegitimate to have a landfill. Our feeling was we didn't feel that was the kind of industry that Spartanburg would want for the long run."

Waste Management was looking to build a new facility in Enoree because its Palmetto landfill was nearing the end of its useful life. Opponents were quick to argue there was no need for another landfill, since Spartanburg County operated its own landfill, which er 40 or 50 years, and Republic Services operated a regional landfill just a few miles away from Enoree in neighboring Union County.

Spartanburg's District 4 councilman Rock Adams, who opposed the landfill planned for his district, believes "a show of force of the voters of Spartanburg County," rather than money, was the ultimate factor in derailing the project.

"We had a council meeting a day or two before this was supposed to come up. (About) 700 to 750 people attended the council meeting. We had some groups of people here in Spartanburg and Upstate Forever. They mailed out cards to the registered voters around the county in Council Districts 3 and 4."

Opposition may not have been so strong if the landfill would just have been for Spartanburg County, Adams believed.

"The one they were proposing was going to be taking care of out-of-state trash," Dr. Lesesne said. "We didn't want Spartanburg County's economic development being built around landfills. We recognized (that) if we created trash we needed to take care of it but we didn't want to take care of other people's trash."

While Spartanburg County Council Chairman Jeffrey Horton remains unsure to this day why the talks broke down with Waste Management, since he says he wasn't in the loop at the time, he believes there were several reasons why the project didn't pan out.

"It's a long story and I hate to pull the scab back off it again," he said.

Horton was among a threemember minority on the council opposed to negotiating with Waste Management about the Enoree landfill and he said the amount of money Waste Management was willing to pay was never an issue for him.

Enter Spartanburg from Interstate 85 near Highway 290 and one of the first things you'll see is the "big bald mountain" at Palmetto landfill, he said. "If we bring in someone from the Greenville-Spartanburg airport to see Spartanburg, the first thing they see is litter strewn highways," he said. "It's not a good impression."

A landfill in Enoree would have created a similar entrance into Spartanburg from folks coming north from Columbia, he said.

"For me, it was never about the money," he said. "It was about the appearance of the county that I live in. The need for the landfill did not outweigh the drawbacks in my opinion, from the increased traffic flows to the smell and odor."

And residents of Enoree should have had a say, he said. "A lot of the individuals who were for the landfill said, hey, you're putting it in the middle of nowhere," Horton said. "I said, hey, Enoree is somewhere. I decided early on I wasn't going to let dollar signs delude my thoughts as we debated this controversial issue."

Though it's been more than two years since the battle ended over the Enoree landfill plans, Adams said the issue is still coming up. He said he's been fielding calls from residents in Marlboro County about how to fight plans for a landfill there.

Yes, he agreed, an Enoree landfill would have brought big money into the county.

"Money's not everything," he said. "You have to think about the health and welfare of your people, your future generations, because that landfill will be there until the end of time. That one in Enoree would have been the same way."

County Council member David Britt, who was one of the four council members who initially agreed to negotiations with Waste Management, said he never supported the plan.

"I don't think any of the council members wanted it," he said. "I never wanted a landfill."

Britt said the four-members agreed to negotiate terms with Waste Management because council felt backed into a corner. A loophole in state law potentially could have allowed a landfill without any say by council at all, he said.

"The only options we had (at the time) were to let them come and fight them, or negotiate with them."

From then on, the council members were hit with an intense public relations campaign from multiple angles, he said, including from a competing waste company.

"It had to be one of the biggest and most expensive political campaigns ever done in Spartanburg," he said. "In the end," Britt said, "the bottom line was their offer wasn't nearly as good when it was flushed out as it was on paper. When we really got down to hard negotiations, their offer was not anything close to what I would agree to, and we killed it."

Speaking like a man who sustained a fair share of lumps and bruises during the process, Britt said, "I'll tell you this, I won't go down that road again."