John and Susan Pittman own their own business, they build houses, they demolish buildings and they excavate property.
A couple of months ago, they purchased 25 acres of property behind the Lighthouse Church in order to start another venture, a construction debris landfill that would be the final resting site of items from some of their demolition projects.
“This is where the concrete, the brick, the plaster would go,” Susan Pittman said Monday. “There would be no carpet, no sanitary waste, no household garbage. That kind of stuff would have to go into a municipal landfill.”
In fact, the law states that the Pittman’s can’t accept that kind of waste in their landfill. Doing so would draw large fines against them and their business.
“There would be no hazardous material, no liquid material,” Pittman said. “All hazardous material would have to be abated.”
That includes asbestos, drums of liquid chemicals, any type of waste that would be harmful to the environment.
Pittman said the debris will fill in a gully just to the right of the old soccer fields on the property behind the church. She said trees and brush currently on the property will be maintained to help buffer the site from the roadway until the landfill is closed.
At that point, it will be covered with dirt and sown with grass seed.
“Right now, it’s a gully,” she said. “By the time we’re finished, it will look like the soccer field.”
The Pittmans are in the process of securing a permit from the county for operation of the landfill. Dan Logan, solid waste coordinator for the county, said the Pittmans are in the initial stages of the application process with the county and will also have to go through a similar process with the state. They are not dumping debris now and probably won’t be for some time, even if the permit is approved.
Owen County has a stringent ordinance that will govern all four phases of the landfill process, Logan explained, from making the application to closing the landfill when it is full.
Owen County Judge-Executive Billy O’Banion explained the ordinance was approved by the fiscal court in 1997 and then amended in 1998 when Hedges Excavating was considering a landfill in the northern portion of the community.
He commended former County Judge-Executive Tom Olds and County Attorney Charlie Carter for their forethought in making the ordinance so stringent.
“They have given us the ability to control the situation ourselves,” he said.
That’s important, he said, because public perception is that a landfill, any landfill, is a bad idea for the community.
But he added if the Pittmans meet the ordinance requirements, they’ll be allowed to put the landfill on the property they’ve purchased.
“There are rules for them to follow,” he said. “If they follow them, we move forward.”
Some of those requirements include a 750-yard buffer zone from any other landfill. That means that at the most, the Pittmans would be able to put only two of the landfills on the property.
Also, the maximum capacity for the landfill is 40,000 cubic yards of waste.
Logan and O’Banion said the Pittmans have been in contact with the county and appear to be planning to meet the requirements of the ordinance, which includes inspection by the solid waste coordinator of every load of debris that goes into the landfill.
O’Banion said he’s not “crazy” about a landfill in the county, but pointed out that the ordinance already in place will control every item that goes into it if the permit is approved.
“Our job is to make sure he follows every rule in place,” O’Banion said.
But Logan said it’s important to keep the specifics of the project in mind.
“The word landfill immediately raises a red flag,” Logan said. “But it totally changes the perspective when you realize what kind of landfill it will be.”

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