Re: FW: Fwd: Landfill Info

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Landfill suit riles County Council 
'We're a big, fat target,' complains one member 

Monday, May 15, 2000

By NEIL MODIE 
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER 





Despite insisting that the county's Cedar Hills landfill isn't the main 
culprit, King County officials want to pay its neighbors $16.5 million to 
settle a lawsuit over odor, noise, vibration and bird problems.

To do otherwise, they say, could cost taxpayers many times more.

Because of a quirk in state law applying to litigation involving solid-waste 
disposal sites, "we have no protection, no defense" in a lawsuit of this 
nature, County Executive Ron Sims said in an interview.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs say they want a settlement approved by the 
County Council today or they'll press on with the lawsuit.

Any settlement would be shared by nearly 4,000 neighbors within 2.4 miles of 
the 920-acre landfill north of Maple Valley. But some council members are 
angry and are balking.

"We've become 'Settlements R Us.' Sue us and we give you money," complained 
Councilman Chris Vance, R-Auburn. "We're a big, fat target, and we settle 
(lawsuits) all the time."

Added Councilman Dwight Pelz, D-Seattle: "We're wondering if the prosecuting 
attorney is offering up a settlement too readily."

Sims, however, said county Prosecutor Norm Maleng's staff advises him that a 
verdict against the county could cost as much as $72 million -- the amount 
the neighbors had asked.

That, he said, would trigger a garbage-rate increase for county residents 
outside Seattle.

Maleng's deputies declined comment on complaints that his office gives up too 
easily.

After a more than two-month holdout, the council seems to be inching toward 
grudging approval of the settlement.

Vance said he expects the council to approve it. But he'll vote against it 
"because, A, I don't think the county did anything wrong, and B, it is 
self-destructive for us to settle lawsuits like this because it just invites 
more lawsuits."

Council members mainly resent the fact that much of the stench was caused by 
Cedar Falls Composting Inc., a private firm on land adjoining the 40-year-old 
landfill. Cedar Grove got out of the class action suit in December 1998 by 
agreeing to pay $500,000 and assigning insurance claims to the plaintiffs.

Rod Hansen, the county's director of solid waste, noted that between 1994 and 
1997, the period that gave rise to the suit, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency 
found that 82 percent of the bad-odor complaints by nearby residents were 
caused by Cedar Grove. Only 18 percent were blamed on the landfill.

But a King County Superior Court judge ruled in January 1999 that the county 
is liable for all odor-related damages as well as other damages.

That means the county could be stuck with most of the cost because it has the 
deepest pockets.

In most lawsuits in which more than one party is at fault, Washington's 1986 
Tort Reform Act says, each party shall be liable only for damages reflecting 
its share of the fault. But the law specifically exempts solid waste disposal 
sites.

"It means we're 100 percent liable for damages even if we caused only 10 
percent of the damages," observed Councilman Rob McKenna, R-Bellevue.

Alluding to the county's settlement of two smaller lawsuits by Cedar Hills 
neighbors in the 1980s, Pelz said council members are also angry "that we're 
being sued for the third time in a row by people who moved in next door to a 
garbage dump."

"When you're buying a house next to a garbage dump, chances are you're moving 
next to something that stinks on occasion. And chances are you paid less for 
your house because it was next to a garbage dump," Pelz said.

But plaintiff Will Gering said that when he bought his home north of Cedar 
Hills 23 years ago, "we were virtually unaware of it because the landfill was 
at a much lower level and it was also in a different area from where they 
fill now."

Two factors in the early 1990s contributed to Cedar Hills' odor problem: 
Seattle began shipping its garbage elsewhere, and the county's then-infant 
recycling program was more successful than expected.

The result, Hansen said, was that open sections of the landfill filled up 
with garbage more slowly, and so the refuse was left exposed longer before it 
was covered and sealed.

Another problem vexing council members is that the settlement wouldn't 
necessarily protect the county from all future claims.

Once a judge approves the settlement, the county would be effectively 
protected from any new lawsuits for two years and would have only limited 
exposure to liability for another three.

But Brad Jones and Ken Kieffer, the plaintiffs' attorneys, said the landfill 
is unlikely to again cause the type of problems that led to the lawsuit.

Stringent federal clean-air regulations went into effect this year, and the 
county has spent millions of dollars to make the landfill a better neighbor.

Filling at the rate of nearly a million tons of garbage a year, Cedar Hills 
is due to reach capacity and close in about 2012.

Marge Langdahl, a leading plaintiff who lives just west of the landfill, 
acknowledged that it is far less offensive today than it once was.

It will be nice to be compensated for years of noise and odors, she said.

But she added that "it's not the money at all. It's the peace of mind and the 
feeling that we're actually being heard (by county officials). It seems 
that's the only way we can get our point across -- when it actually comes to 
dollars."



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P-I reporter Neil Modie can be reached at 206-448-8321 or 
neilmodie@seattle-pi.com