By Hadley Hitson, Montgomery Advertiser
The underground landfill fire in St. Clair County is almost out — over three months since it started burning and disrupted the lives of families in Moody and surrounding areas.
The Alabama Department of Environmental Management reports that no smoke has been seen at the landfill since Feb. 28, and the “prevalent” odor faded over the last week. Still, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it “could be several more weeks before the fire is completely out.”
Now, state and local leaders are looking to learn from the shortcomings that the fire exposed across all levels of government. ADEM announced last week that it established a working group to examine the response to the fire and make recommendations on how to improve the statewide response to emergency situations like the fire in the future.
“The one thing we’ve got to work on is: How do we make this go faster? Because we cannot put citizens through this again,” State Sen. Lance Bell said at an ADEM press conference last week. “We were all talking on the phone, working through the different channels, but when you have a property that’s owned by an individual and an unregulated landfill in an unincorporated county, it becomes a nightmare.”
The fire at Environmental Landfill, Inc. started burning in late November. The Moody Fire Department responded immediately but was unable to reach the underground source. From there, authority over the response shifted several times before ADEM called in the EPA for help.
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