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Appeal filed in landfill decision
Published 3/18/2010 in Local News
By SHAJIA AHMAD
A local family has filed an appeal against a county zoning board's recent decision to allow for the placement of a construction and demolition landfill and related mining and grinding operations in a residential area south of Garden City.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram Piles of discarded tires lay in an area for a proposed constuction and demolition landfill in south Garden City.
The Diller family, residents of East Burnside Drive, filed an appeal in District Court Tuesday, arguing that the Finney County Board of Zoning Appeals' decision to grant a conditional use permit to D&H Enterprises for a sand and gravel mining operation, construction and demolition landfill, and concrete and asphalt recycling operation near their properties has failed to comply with zoning ordinance requirements and is both a health and environmental hazard to adjacent residents like them. The appeal also alleges that a list of permitted uses for the site does not include asphalt or concrete grinding operations. No hearing date has yet been set in the appeal case.
Raymond Diller could not be reached for comment this morning.
The zoning appeals board granted the permit request to D&H Enterprises on about 22 acres of its property in mid February, despite several residents, including the Diller family, speaking publicly against the action, expressing their concerns about the possibilities of water well contamination, increased noise and dust pollution from grinding and mining operations, and how the operation could negatively affect their property values.
D&H Enterprises previously went before the same board with a similar proposal in September 2006, but a conditional use permit was rejected at the time because previous board members felt the operations would materially increase heavy truck traffic on Burnside Drive — the only access road to the area that serves the entire area — increase noise and dirt pollution and possibly contaminate water wells, in addition to other considerations. The business filed a legal appeal in district court, but the board's decision was upheld by a judge at that time.
Current chairman of the zoning appeals board, Bill King, could not be reached for comment this morning.
King has said part of his board's decision to grant the current permit request includes a Lee Construction Inc.-owned demolition site that lies about half a mile west and is currently in the process of closing. In addition, D&H Enterprises also must meet additional regulations by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for the proposed uses for the site, scientific rulings his board is not in a position to make decisions about, King has said.
The site for the proposed demolition pit is in a large, fenced-in property that sits adjacent to several houses and modular and trailer homes to the west and north — some homes are well-maintained while others are abandoned — and the area around the proposed pit is littered with slabs of concrete, old pipes, tires, and other pieces of rubbish and trash, litter that D&H Enterprises representative Gary Dick has said he suspects has been left over from the previous landowners or dumped by numerous individuals over the decades.
A message to Dick was not returned this morning.
Dick has said construction of the demolition landfill would allow his business to clean up some of the area around the proposed site because they would be able to dump some of the materials in the pit.
Garden City commissioners also filed a letter with the county zoning appeals board, expressing their concerns about the proximity of the proposed operations to the Arkansas River and water tables and the city's desired long-term use of the area for residential purposes.
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