Landfill plan bulldozed them, Adams County homeowners say
Rocky Mountain News
ADAMS COUNTY, CO - After years of living next to a wheat farm, homeowners near Bennett saw their new neighbors arrive this weekend - on bulldozers.
A landfill is being dug near them, six miles east of Denver International Airport.
"We're not happy. I don't even know what the smell is going to be like," said Flora Sweed, who lives on a 35-acre property on Schumacher Road near 80th Avenue, across from where the bulldozers started grading the land.
Neighbors say they were surprised when Five Point Development Co. started running the bulldozers early Saturday.
"It should have been a red flag for the real estate agent," said Anita O'Dell, another resident. "But nobody alerted us to it" when her family bought their home a year ago.
Other neighbors said they knew the site was approved for a fly-ash landfill 14 years ago but figured it would be a small annoyance at worst. Few if any seemed to know that two years ago, the state and Adams County approved a change in the original permit, allowing Five Point to put a sanitary landfill on the 164-acre property.
A fly-ash landfill would have meant Xcel Energy trucks hauling big bags of coal ash from power plants to the new dump. A sanitary landfill means an all-purpose dump for household trash and the possibility of constant truck traffic, neighbors say.
Mark Molen, a consultant for Thornton-based Five Point, said, "We've been in contact with the county and state, which is what was required.
"We're concerned about the objections the neighbors have and we're looking at ways to mitigate issues that come up. But many of those already have been addressed in the plan."
Adams County Planning Director Rob Coney is sympathetic with homeowners - to a point.
"I would prefer that a company preparing to construct a landfill after so many years had passed since the last public hearing would have conducted some outreach to the adjacent areas," he said.
Coney added that if a landfill were being proposed today so close to the four dozen houses, it wouldn't stand a chance.
But that would be rewriting history, he said.
In fact, when the landfill first was approved in 1993, there wasn't a home nearby.
Once Five Point got the permit, the county couldn't rescind it just because homes started springing up. Nor could the county say "no" to the houses. State law says counties can't nix proposed subdivisions if the homes are on lots of 35 acres or more, as are the homes near the landfill.
