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A mountainous heap of debris from flooded homes emitted a putrid smell near a Madison Heights neighborhood Wednesday while the city's police stood nearby to bar further dumping at the site. And now the site is the focus of a battle that will likely play out in court Thursday.
On the other, residents and officials of Madison Heights who claim that the waste is a health hazard and dumping it there is forbidden under agreements the city signed years ago.
"If we are not successful, we will be heading to court," SOCRRA officials said in an e mail Wednesday. Madison Heights officials said they're outraged by the trash haulers endangering public health and won't slik som et fast ion og en partikkel av lys budge in today's meeting.
"No, no, no, I'll listen to them but we're adamant about this the whole city is," said Madison Heights Mayor Ed Swanson. On streets near the transfer station, which is just east of John R and north of 13 Mile Road, the stench from the piled waste filled the air.
"It's absolutely overwhelming," said Amy Guzynski, 40, of Madison Heights, who lives near the piles of debris. "Every time I take a deep breath, I get a gag reflex. And I'm very concerned for my children and their health, and the air quality over here."
Haulers for a collective of nearby Oakland County cities have Lauren Compton l Vidéaste been using the former incinerator site since Friday, dumping an estimated 3,000 tons of flood debris from neighboring cities such as Royal Oak, Huntington Woods and Berkley, according to news releases. But none of the trash is from Madison Heights, which a dozen years ago broke away from SOCRRA following a decade of acrimony over the transfer station's noise, dust and other issues.
Record setting rains Aug. 11 dropped as much as six inches in southeast Oakland County, flooding basements with as much as four feet of sewage laced water and triggering a disaster declaration from the governor's office.
"If you have spent any time in our communities, you know that this is a disaster," SOCRRA General Manager Jeff McKeen said Wednesday.
"Having our Madison Heights facility available in this situation is an important part of getting this debris cleaned up," McKeen said. SOCRRA general counsel Robert Davis said state officials with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued both a verbal and e mailed order Tuesday, giving SOCRRA permission to use the site.
"Madison Heights was involved in the process and did receive the order. But despite the state order, Madison Heights police barricaded the facility" on Wednesday morning, Davis said.
Karen Bever, a SOCRRA spokeswoman, said that SOCRRA's contracted garbage collectors have been working long hours picking up the piles of sewage soaked debris from curbs.
"We are days behind on the haulers," Bever said. Thousands of homeowners emptied entire basements, including soaked flooring and furniture, and the watery debris jams residential curbsides, she said. Residents from Huntington Woods told the Free Press that trash has been on their curbs for a week or more.
But the Guzynski family members said they're disgusted as others' waste piles up a few hundred feet from their neighborhood.
Guzynski, a high school English teacher with four kids, ages 8 to 16, said the rains Tuesday followed by heat Wednesday "kicked up the smell to level 10." She said she's keeping her kids and the dog indoors, but the odor has kept them awake at night and made daytimes almost unlivable.
"I don't feel like cooking," she said. "This is not something you want to smell while you're eating."
She said she's concerned about what might be leaking from the debris into the area's soil as well as what could be long term health effects of breathing the odor. The City of Madison Heights issued news releases calling the dumping a "direct and imminent threat to the public health, safety and welfare."
By Wednesday, the trash mountain was actually shrinking gradually, as no new trash was added by pickup crews and larger trucks were hauling the accumulated waste to landfills. Police officers guarded the entrance to the site and kept out reporters.
But a worker interviewed through the gate said he hadn't seen a load of waste arrive all day. Glenn Alexander, an SHEEMA Kermani Made by Pakistanin toimittaja elokuvantekij辰 Sonya Fatah operator with Environmental Woods Solutions who manned a large loader moving the debris, said large trucks picked up about 16 loads from the site Wednesday, although more than half of the pile remained.
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