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News and Views on Toxic Lafarge and the Lordstown Landfill

What You Need to Know about the Poisons at Lafarge

News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

Lafarge Holcim's Lordstown Landfill did not operate with a 2022 landfill license and is currently operating without a 2022 license, receives more than 5,000 railcars of out-of-state waste a year and has dumped more than 100,000 railcars since opening in 2004. It also receives 10,000 truckloads of waste per year and has generated more than $150 million in sales.


By law, the Lordstown Landfill is permitted to only accept demolition and construction waste such as bricks, wood, shingles and drywall. Being extremely expensive to dispose of properly in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, the building demolition waste is purposely crushed, shredded, pulverized rendering it unidentifiable. Then it is often blended with even more costly asbestos, garbage, sewage sludge and household hazardous waste and railed to Lafarge at a fraction of the real market cost. This is called "cocktailing". 


TOXIC LAFARGE has accepted thousands of tons of this type of cocktailed waste.
"Cocktailing" is why such "unidentifiable" waste was banned for disposal in demolition landfills by Ohio Law HB 397 in December, 2005. See: ORC 3714.081


Please review the images and reports presented on this site, read the Ohio EPA inspections, and judge for yourself.


This toxic, cocktailed East Coast waste has created massive quantities of 10 different poisonous gases and has sickened people including neighbors, an Ohio EPA inspector and Lafarge‘s own staff. Several were hospitalized. 


(See the toxic gas chart in the photo section).


Short and long term symptoms employees, neighbors and inspectors experienced include: Nausea, intense headaches, chronic fatigue, disorientation, “brain fog“, nasal and rectal bleeding, sleep loss, irritability, eye inflammation, anxiety, memory loss and amnesia. 


The toxic dust at Lordstown may be just as dangerous to your health. Demolished and pulverized building waste often contains asbestos from insulation and shingles, silica dust from concrete, arsenic from treated patio lumber, lead and cadmium from paint, mercury from thermostats and lights, mold from wood and drywall, fiberglass from bathtubs and showers, micro-plastic particles from just about everything and formaldehyde from paneling.


 Lordstown's dust and vapors may also include a wide range of toxins from materials stored in buildings and barns that are not required to be cleaned out before demolition. This includes insecticides, herbicides, solvents, oils, cleaners, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), household hazardous wastes, radium paint and much more.


If you have been exposed to TOXIC LAFARGE‘s Landfill in Lordstown, and are experiencing the symptoms described above, please contact a medical professional ASAP.


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 Lafarge knows that NOT spending money on desperately needed environmental protection supports their bottom line.


"Lafarge‘s incidental environmental fines lag far behind the pace of their profits so they make few voluntary improvements and keep it ‘business as usual‘."


News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

December 3, 2022                                                       Holcim’s Lordstown, OH Demolition 

Landfill is Pumping a Staggering 20 million Gallons a Year of Benzene and Ammonia Contaminated Leachate into the Local Sewer System


A 10/31/2022 report from the Holcim Corporation to the Ohio EPA details the massive volume of contaminated liquid being pumped from their Lordstown Landfill to the undersized City of Warren treatment plant. The report lists the 12-month rolling average of discharge is more than 57,000 gallons a day or over 20 million gallons of wastewater per year.

Certified laboratory reports show the wastewater is heavily contaminated with mercury, benzene, vinyl chloride, acetone and ammonia. Ammonia concentrations exceed 25,000 ng/l.

The enormous volume and deadly toxic contaminants in the wastewater leads to several serious questions:

Relative to demolition waste landfills, which should only take wood, concrete, roofing materials and the like, where does ammonia and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and vinyl chloride come from?

The ammonia is most likely coming from New York and New Jersey sewage sludges which the Lordstown Landfill illegally accepted for years. Documents show over 100,000 railcars have been accepted for disposal at Holcim’s Landfill and many contained hundreds of tons of East Coast poop. Human waste releases huge quantities of ammonia once buried.

Cancer-causing benzene and other toxic substances are most likely from industrial waste which was never inspected by Holcim, its predecessor Lafarge, or the transfer stations located in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts. Waste generators, haulers and transfer operators have been caught through the years “cocktailing” expensive toxic wastes with cheap demolition waste. Less than 0.001% of the railcars received at the Lordstown Landfill have been rejected for unacceptable waste and only when agency inspectors were on-site. 

The 20,000,000 gallons per year generated by Holcim begs another question. Holcim’s Lordstown Landfill is 80% capped; however, it is well established in the landfill industry that proper capping greatly reduces rainfall infiltration and the resultant leachate wastewater. So why is the Lordstown Landfill generating these huge volumes of contaminated wastewater?

OCTOBER 17,2020 - LAFARGE FINED $778 MILLION BY THE US FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. Lafarge has plead guilty to crimes in Syria involving paying the terrorist group ISIS to help keep their cement operations in production. The millions paid to ISIS was used to to buy weapons to fight and kill US soldiers and enslave Yazidi women. France, Syrian workers and Yazidi women also are in court with Lafarge. Lafarge has recently lost an appeal to similar charges in France's Supreme Court


SEPTEMBER 2022- Lafarge asks to DOUBLE the burning capacity of their landfill gas as the H2S is much higher than consultants anticipated. Read how Ohio EPA approves all of Lafarge's requests:

Lafarge's Lordstown C&D Landfill has been gassing its neighbors with poisonous hydrogen sulfide, carbon disulfide and carbonyl sulfide since 2005. Like the Sunny Farms Landfill, Lafarge takes no "action" to “improve” conditions until absolutely forced to by the Ohio EPA, who in turn takes no action until screaming citizens are knocking down their doors and puking from illnesses.

IN 2020, Lafarge installed a haphazard and dangerous, bottom-of-the-barrel gas collection system per a 2019 OEPA consent order. It actually created worse emissions by releasing deeper, raw undiluted gas upon workers and neighbors. A different consultant, SCS, claimed to have the solution, and like Sunny Farms, Lordstown is now burning H2S, with a cheapy rental burner, and converting it to toxic sulfur dioxide — as if that is an upgrade. 

SCS, with all their claimed experience, underestimated Lafarge’s gas, in both concentration and pressure, and has asked to increase the system’s capacity. This letter from the OEPA approves that request (of course). The monitored H2S level at Lafarge’s Landfill averages 8,000 ppm or 8,000,000 ppb hydrogen sulfide or 8 times OSHA’s “instant death” level. As usual, the other toxic gases are not, and have never been, monitored.

Perhaps SCS has not worked with a landfill that excavated through 2 groundwater tables that pour 30 million gallons of water/year into the waste causing a gas-generating bacterial frenzy or a demolition landfill that received millions of tons of illegal wastes including sewage sludges.

Lordstown Landfill Neighbors sue Lafarge in $5 Million Class Action Lawsuit  The neighbors have had enough of the stink, the dust, the headaches, gagging, sick kids, humiliation, the do-nothing Lordstown Village Council, and the lies from Lafarge, the Trumbull County Health Department and the Ohio EPA. Multiple media outlets reported in the past few days that legal action against Lafarge has been filed in the U.S. District Court. The documented evidence is overwhelming against LAFARGE and their two decades of GROSS NEGLIGENCE. Over 1,000 violations of the Ohio EPA orders, 500 neighbor complaints, illegal asbestos, proven stream contamination, multiple hospitalizations — it goes on and on. Read here:https://www.wfmj.com/story/47039548/lordstown-landfill-sued-for-dollar5m-by-neighbor-over-dust-and-odor-allegations



OhioEPA Issues "Discretionary Exemption" from requiring an air Permit to Install for a rental gas extraction system.

On May 10, 2022 the Agency approved LafargeHolcim and the Lordstown Landfill to install a toxic gas collection system using a rental flare control system. The design of the system is not on the Ohio EPA's public document server but is likely the system that was designed by SCS 18 months ago. Lafarge was able to stretch out the cost of installing a cheapie system quite a while. The baseline for the system's effectiveness is not defined in the Director's Exemption. The off-site H2S data for all of 2022 has not been provided by the Agency and the official request for the public data is in "legal review" which must be a delay tactic for the hiding the facts of what the neighbors are experiencing. Shameful!

May 18, 2022 Lafarge 'complicity' with ISIS crimes against humanity charges upheld

A French appeals court confirmed that the cement giant Lafarge must face charges of complicity in crimes against humanity over alleged payoffs to Islamic State and other jihadist groups during Syria's civil war, judicial sources told AFP on Wednesday.

Lafarge, now part of the Swiss building materials conglomerate Holcim, acknowledged that it paid nearly $13.7 million to middlemen to keep its Syrian cement factory running in 2013 and 2014, long after other French firms had pulled out of the country.

The appeals court sided with prosecutors who said Lafarge "financed, via its subsidiaries, Islamic State operations with several millions of euros in full awareness of its activities."

See: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/levant-turkey/1652884081-france-lafarge-complicity-with-is-crimes-against-humanity-charges-upheld


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TRUE STORY

"A Neighborhood's Long Struggle with an Offensive Landfill"

Read Parts I through V   April 11, 2022

Part I The Nightmare Begins

https://www.sustainableearthreporter.com/article/567557833-a-neighborhood-s-long-struggle-with-an-offensive-landfill

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"A Neighborhood's Long Struggle with an Offensive Landfill" Part II 

April 20, 2022  See: https://www.worldonlinenewsreports.com/article/568189326-a-neighborhood-s-long-struggle-with-an-offensive-landfill


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Lafarge violated its Stormwater Discharge Limits by 1,500%.  

Total Suspended Solids (TSS), which can significantly impact water quality, was discharged from the landfill at a concentration of 641 mg/l on a permit limit of 45 mg/l. Copper, a metal contaminant also toxic to aquatic life also exceeded the landfill's permit limit. StormwaterX states "Pollutants such as pesticides and PCBs adhere to the surfaces of TSS and can be transported into aquatic environments in this fashion. High TSS levels are often associated with higher levels of disease-causing microorganisms such as viruses, parasites, and some bacteria..."

Demolition waste often contains lead from soldered pipes, asbestos from floor tile and insulation, mercury from thermostats and fluorescent lighting, radioactive elements from pre-1968 radium watch-painting operations, mold spores on drywall, fiberglass from bathroom fixtures and pesticides and herbicides stored in old barns and outbuildings.  Demolition waste can also contain arsenic from wolmanized "green" patio lumber, PCBs from oil soaked wooden factory floors and contaminated paint as well as garage wastes such as oils, solvents, paints, gasoline tanks and asbestos from brakes. 

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On March 29, 2022 Lafarge's Lordstown Landfill received a "Warning Letter" from the Ohio EPA for accepting 36.18 tons of regulated asbestos without a permit. Lafarge does not perform waste source inspections and just about anything and everything gets sent there. Lafarge also does not monitor the workplace for asbestos, so it is unknown whether the workers were exposed and then brought home asbestos micro-fibers to their families. second hand asbestosis kills several thousand American a year.

See:

http://edocpub.epa.ohio.gov/publicportal/ViewDocument.aspx?docid=1720641       

and

https://www.environmentalnewswatch.com/article/567126691-lordstown-ohio-landfill-receives-ohio-epa-warning-letter-for-taking-38-tons-of-asbestos-waste


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Lafarge has been indicted by the Government of France for their collaboration with ISIS terrorists in Syria. To keep the profits flowing at their cement plant in Syria, they paid ISIS millions of dollars and provided cement for terrorist tunnels. When ISIS inevitably attacked the plant, the French managers fled in prepared vans, quickly abandoning the local cement workers to their fates.

See:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/7/frances-lafarge-loses-ruling-in-syria-crimes-against-humanity


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The Lordstown Landfill has caused more than 600 complaints from their neighbors and workers

but Lafarge will only make cheapest and flimsiest attempts to remediate things--- and only after ordered to so by the Ohio EPA. So the many problems persist.


As a result of Governor DeWine being "extra friendly" to businesses in Ohio, and with crony lobbyists leaning on Ohio EPA management, follow-up enforcement activity on the Lordstown Landfill has been unimpressive.


The Trumbull County Health Department is responsible for issuing the annual landfill operating license to Lafarge. But Lordstown's 2022 license has been neither approved or denied. However, the health department has received more than $5 million in disposal fees since 2004 and is not an effective enforcement option due to the conflict of interest. The health department should have their licensing program revoked by the Ohio EPA once again.


Lafarge has received more than 30 enforcement letters and two consent orders yet they continue to operate with impunity. 


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"Employees and Neighbors of Lafarge are treated no differently than the terrorists in Syria. We are just tools and fools to be kept at bay until they complete their profiteering"


OhioEPA document links about Lafarge's Lordstown Landfill:

http://edocpub.epa.ohio.gov/publicportal/ViewDocument.aspx?docid=1598291


http://edocpub.epa.ohio.gov/publicportal/ViewDocument.aspx?docid=1734010


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Other Places are Screaming about Lafarge

News: Lafarge is now called Holcim but that doesn't change their character. News articles below demonstrate why

Other Places are Screaming about Lafarge

Many towns in the U.S. and other countries are pleading with their respective regulatory agencies about Lafarge Holcim environmental recklessness.

 

Hagerstown, Maryland

https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/news/2022/02/02/mde-department-environment-holcim-settle-alleged-clean-air-violations-washington-county/9317963002/


Ravena, New York                                     https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Ravena-cement-plant-reaches-850-000-settlement-16140061.php

and

https://spotlightnews.com/news/government/2021/05/12/state-dec-pulls-lafarge-holcims-right-to-burn-tire-derived-fuel/  

 

  Bath, Ontario 

https://www.kingstonist.com/culture/opinion/dust-in-the-wind-lafarge-cement-plant-contamination-concerns-bath-residents  


Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

 https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/environment/a-potent-human-carcinogen-found-in-lafarge-brookfields-cement-kiln-dust-is-making-its-way-onto-nova-scotias-farm-fields       

 

Staffordshire, UK 

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/leek-post-times/20200513/281578062843899


Paris, France

https://www.barrons.com/news/toxic-liquid-leaks-into-paris-river-from-cement-plant-01598977819#:~:text=Hundreds%20of%20litres%20of%20toxic%20wastewater%20have%20leaked,rather%20than%20an%20intentional%20act%20by%20the%20company.            


Mfansing, Nigeria                                                       https://www.icirnigeria.org/how-lafarges-mining-corruption-cause-untold-hardship-to-mfamosing-community-part-1  


Harare, Zimbabwe

https://www.business-humanrights.org/de/latest-news/zimbabwe-cement-giant-has-been-discharging-abnormal-dust-emission-into-the-environment/


Mormont, Switzerland

https://www.barrons.com/news/swiss-police-clear-months-long-protest-at-lafargeholcim-quarry-01617131709


La Union, Philippines

https://www.bworldonline.com/economy/2021/03/03/348120/denr-fines-holcim-philippines-after-oil-spill-at-la-union-plant/


The list goes on and on...


The quality of our air, water and land and the quality of life of countless people are all degraded from Lafarge's ruthless profiteering.


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  If you have smelled the putrid toxic odors around the Lordstown Landfill, call or email:


Ohio EPA inspector Jennifer Carlin         (330) 963-1133 Jennifer.Carlin@epa.ohio.gov    

or      

Assistant Chief Jennifer Kurko                (330) 963-1253 Jennifer.Kurko@epa.ohio.gov


Don't waste your time calling the Trumbull County Health Department

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"Lafarge's landfill pays more than one million dollars a year in waste fees to the Trumbull County Health Department, the Village of Lordstown and the State of Ohio."


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