The landfill pollutes the groundwater and gags the neighbors. And there are not enough government inspectors to ride herd on the place.
What's a county to do?
Make the landfill pay the bill, Broward County says.
County officials on Tuesday proposed charging Waste Management Inc. about $750,000 a year to pay for a team of county scientists to monitor the company's landfill near Pompano Beach.
One inspector even would be stationed full-time at the landfill.
"That's great. The county doesn't have enough people," said Joanne Colliu, secretary of Operation Smell, 22 neighborhood groups united to complain about the landfill. "The company ought to pay. I just don't see why the taxpayers should pay."
The county's Department of Natural Resource Protection now has only one inspector to keep tabs on the main landfill plus 33 smaller trash-handling locations.
Inspectors have found signs that the landfill, opened in 1971, is leaking toxic chemicals, said Kevin Burger, county director of pollution prevention. Water near the landfill has at times been found polluted with chlorides, benzene and other chemicals.
Waste Management, the nation's biggest garbage company, is proposing a major expansion of the landfill. A company subsidiary wants to build a sewage sludge composting plant there.
The money collected from Waste Management would hire five inspectors, engineers and chemists, with enough left for a pair of consultants.
Most of their time would be devoted to the landfill, searching for problems that Waste Management would have to pay to correct.