A Publicly-Owned Landfill in Alabama Caught Fire and Smoldered for 50 Days. Nearby Residents Were Left in the Dark

NEW MARKET, Ala.—Merri Gardunia thought her house might be on fire. 

Gardunia, a special education teacher, was on her way home in August 2023 when she saw the smoke billowing above her road in New Market, Alabama, a small town just northeast of Huntsville. 

As she got closer, she sighed in relief. It wasn’t her house. It was the landfill next door. She’d never seen smoke at the site before, but she didn’t think too much of it, she told Inside Climate News. That was before she began waking up with migraines. She’d had headaches before the fire, Gardunia said, but nothing like these. 

Last week, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management announced it would fine Madison County $5,000 for an open burn the state regulator deemed as a “serious violation” of environmental regulations. The fire at the county-owned landfill, ignited by a spark from an on-site incinerator, according to landfill workers, smoldered for 50 days, into October, after local firefighters did what they could to put out the blaze. 

Tom Brandon, the county commissioner who represents the district where the landfill fire burned, told Inside Climate News that the fire has been “made into a bigger deal than it was.”

Gardunia disagreed. Even if the fire was accidental, she said, public officials should have done more to notify the public.

“They put everybody’s health at risk,” she said. “There are rules for a reason. I don’t take environmental guidelines lightly. They need to abide by them.”

The blaze in New Market began on August 22, according to a response to state officials from a representative of the Madison County landfill. 

A stray ember from an onsite incinerator sparked the fire, an onsite worker later told regulators, and the flames took hold in a nearby pile of vegetative debris. 

A day later, first responders with the New Market Volunteer Fire Department posted a video of personnel dousing the blaze with a firehose as thick smoke billowed from a pile of debris at least a dozen feet high. Another department, Hazel Green Volunteer Fire Department, helped with the response, according to the social media post.

Open burning is prohibited at landfills like the Madison County Landfill Number One because of the risk the fires could be difficult to contain or extinguish.

In recent years, Alabamians have become all too familiar with such risks. In November 2022, an underground blaze began at the Environmental Landfill northeast of Birmingham, near Moody. For months following, the subterranean fire covered dozens of acres near Moody, its burning material reaching more than 150 feet deep. 

The fire and resulting smoke left residents suffering from health impacts and schools limiting outside activity. All the while, state and local officials pointed fingers as to who should be responsible for dousing the flames. Only after federal officials stepped in was the fire quelled and covered.

The fire in New Market was not comparable in scale to that in Moody, which burned across a much larger and deeper area of land, but what happened in the Huntsville suburb demonstrated the looming threat posed by uncontrolled burns. In New Market, despite the fire’s relatively small footprint, firefighters were unable to completely extinguish it. Instead, according to state regulators, the fire would not be snuffed until October 9, a full 50 days after landfill workers said the blaze had begun. 

Tom Brandon, the county commissioner who represents the district where the landfill is located, said that “all agencies were notified” of the blaze when it sparked, but regulators with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) wrote in a proposed consent order that the state agency was not made aware of the fire until an inspector visited the site on September 6 and observed the burning woodpile himself. 

During that inspection, an incinerator operator told an ADEM staffer that the blaze had begun a week prior. A landfill representative would later admit that at the time of the inspection, the fire had already been burning for 15 days. 

Brandon said, however, that he doesn’t believe residents should be concerned about the blaze. 

“It’s been made a bigger deal than what it was,” Brandon said in an interview with Inside Climate News. “It wasn’t no more than just a brush fire that was self-contained in a small area.”

ADEM officials, though, wrote that the agency considered the open burn a “serious violation” of state environmental regulations, though it only fined the facility $5,000 for 50 violations—one for each day the blaze continued. 

Brandon said that he believes the $5,000 fine imposed by ADEM is a result of the agency’s more careful regulation of landfills in the wake of the Moody disaster. 

“I know that ADEM’s been watching very closely different landfills because of that one—because of the extent that one was—but really in any other circumstance, nobody would have ever noticed this one,” Brandon said. “Literally it’s smaller than some of the fires that people start on their property to burn up debris.”

Still, Brandon acknowledged the difficulty in completely extinguishing the fire because debris had been placed in a “large pile.”

“When you have a large pile like that, all you can do is put out the top part—the top layer—but down inside, it’s still smoldering,” he said. “So it’s going to smoke for several days.”

State regulators, in finding the fire burned for 50 days, concluded in a proposed consent order that the county “did not exhibit a standard of care consistent with the requirements of the…code.” 

County officials neither admitted or denied the specific allegations outlined in the order, the regulator document said, but agreed to pay the civil penalty “in the spirit of cooperation.”

Gardunia said that county officials should have notified nearby residents of the fire and any associated health or safety risks. Instead, she said, she only found out about the extent of the blaze when contacted by Inside Climate News. 

“We’re notified about sex offenders nearby, but not this?” Gardunia asked. “It seems like it was almost covered up. Why didn’t they tell us?” 

Gardunia said that around the time the blaze began, headaches she’d occasionally experienced worsened. 

“I’ve never woken up with a headache before,” she said. “And around that time—late August—I even had to purchase migraine medicine.” 

Gardunia said she’s also worried about the impact air pollution from the blaze could have had on her children, the youngest of whom is six years old. 

“The first thing I thought of was ‘Oh my gosh, I hope it doesn’t affect them,’” she said. 

Both federal and state regulators recognize the potential health impacts caused by open burns of material, even so-called “clean” vegetative debris like limbs and leaves that haven’t been treated with chemicals. 

“Wood smoke may smell good, but it’s not good for you,” the Environmental Protection Agency wrote in an advisory about the health risks of open burns of vegetative material. 

Exposure to small particles in wood smoke can increase the risk of heart attack, irregular heartbeat, heart failure, stroke and early death, according to the agency. Exposure can also have respiratory effects, potentially causing asthma attacks or aggravating other lung diseases. Older adults, individuals who are pregnant and children are at an elevated risk of these impacts, according to the EPA. 

“There are people like me who are living so close to this landfill,” Gardunia said. “What they did and didn’t do doesn’t seem reasonable at all… Why are people being so reckless?”

Members of the public who wish to weigh in on ADEM’s proposed consent order involving the New Market landfill fire can submit written comments, including any requests for a hearing, through February 9 to Ronald W. Gore, chief of the agency’s air division, at [email protected].