Evansville firm applied for landfill permit

Thirty-five years ago this week, a southern Indiana firm took a step toward potentially establishing a landfill in Jay County.

The Feb. 27, 1989, edition of The Commercial Review featured a story about an Evansville company filing an application for a permit to operate a new 160-acre landfill in Jay County.

“There is another company that has submitted (an application for) a permit for Jay County,” State Rep. David Hoover (R-Ridgeville) told the newspaper. 

Jay County Commissioners indicated that the permit was being sought by Pro-Eco, a subsidiary of the Black Beauty Coal Company of Evansville. (Officials from the company declined to comment but said Black Beauty was working to schedule a meeting with commissioners.)

Indiana Department of Environmental Management could not confirm the permit application.

The land being targeted by the company for a private, commercial landfill was located on Como Road just north of New Mount Pleasant and about a quarter-miler southeast of the existing landfill. An engineering firm had been conducting soil borings and drilling wells on the property for several weeks, apparently to gather data to support the application.

At the same time, existing landfill operator H&D Excavating had a permit application pending for a 40-acre expansion.

A local group known as Concerned Citizens of Jay County had raised questions about the test wells and pushed commissioners to enact a temporary ban on new landfills and adopt countywide zoning.

Hoover and State Rep. Jeff Espich (R-Uniondale) pledged to get answers from Indiana Department of Environmental Management about the operation of the existing landfill. They noted environmental issues that had risen to the top of the state’s agenda.

“The new issue that’s most important is the environmental issue, dealing with what we’re going to do with the waste,” Espich said. “But we’re going to have to do something with this stuff; we can’t store it in our bedrooms.”