The tin cans slowly rust away and the food labels are long gone. Colors are still visible on some paint cans. Bed springs, washing machines, woven wire, old chemical cans are there also. Near the bottom you can find some hand blown glass bottles that are real collectibles. There is a putrid odor that wafts upward on a humid summer day, like every other on-farm dump that fills up a ravine far from the farmhouse and the road. Dad used it, as did Grandpa, and maybe generations before them. Who knows what lurks in its depths, and who knows what troubles it will bring you, maybe tomorrow, or next year?

On-farm dump sites are commonplace in rural America. It is your property, and you can fill it up as you wish. Crops and livestock return revenue, and your on-farm dump has saved money for you, since you haven’t had to pay the local landfill to take it. You may think you are the only one who knows about it, but probably not. There have been some hunters who have wandered past. Maybe the utility maintenance crews have seen it from the top of power poles. Your local NRCS folks may have taken soil samples near it. Sure you have let the brush grow up around it, because out of sight is out of mind. You have arrived at the farm gate confessional, so let’s talk.

James W. Garthe and Jennifer L. Shufran, at Penn State University, in their report, Farm Dumps: Problems and Solutions, say you may have inherited an on-farm dumpsite that holds items city dwellers had to pay to deposit in landfills. It holds a history of our consumption over the years with a sample of the materials we have chosen to discard. But the Penn State researchers say what has been saved from disposal fees may be miniscule to your financial liability, “Pollutants leached by rain and runoff percolating through the dumped garbage enter the groundwater table and can travel for miles. The farmer can be held legally responsible for degradation the pollutants cause. Even though the legality of the dump itself may not be challenged, the pollution from the dump may cost the farmer many thousands of dollars in cleanup costs and may greatly reduce farm worth.”

No, you may not have plans today to sell your farm, but what happens if you have a chance tomorrow to collect an unbelievable price? The realtor and buyer traipse through the farm inspecting, and mentally laying out roadways, subdivisions, shopping areas, and then they stumble onto your dump. Suddenly the price offer plummets, or maybe even disappears altogether. Oooops! The experience is mentioned by the realtor at a cocktail party to someone whose brother-in-law works in the state environmental office, and a week later an inspector knocks on your door. Oooops! The inspector says there are no laws against on-farm dumps, but according to his geologic maps there is a spring that comes out of the ravine holding the refuse and its water unusually cloudy. Since there is an underground aquifer as well, he wants to test for atrazine because there are a number of old atrazine cans in the dumpsite. Oooops!

Penn State’s Garthe and Shufran say there are two primary environmental laws that come into play in protection of groundwater:
1) Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to protect groundwater, surface water, air and land from contamination by solid waste.
2) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to provide for liability, compensation and cleanup of past industrial and commercial dumping.
Since CERCLA applies to farmland, the Penn State specialists say, “For this reason, farmers need to seriously evaluate past and present farm waste management practices and implement up-to-date waste management plans that address environmental and health concerns and guard against costly liability problems.”

Even a common mortgage application can spur questions about environmental liability, and if your farmland is described in the mortgage, an appraisal may require an environmental site assessment. Various phases of that will look at the legal documents describing the history of the site, a possible on-site inspection, removal of the refuse, or possible removal and treatment of the soil in the vicinity of the site.

Before such a nightmare, you have pledged to spend some time this summer addressing this potential problem. And there may be some good news. Much of the refuse that has refused to disappear may have value in the hot scrap metal market. One of the reasons the price of farm machinery has skyrocketed is the cost of metal, and here’s where you can benefit in having a raw material to sell to the metal recycling industry.

Develop a checklist for cleaning up your on-farm dump that includes: familiarity with the landfill or recycling center, identifying manpower or equipment needed, obtaining any necessary protective equipment, barrels for any sorting that you elect to do, trucks for hauling, and save your receipts for any future documentation needs. If desired, and your lawyer or insurance agent agree, you could involve a local school recycling club. And finally, create an on-farm practice to dispose of your refuse in a way that does not create any environmental liability for you.

By raising the issue of on-farm dumps, and the fact it is a good idea to clean them up, some hints are being made to state and federal EPA officials that remediation grants or cost-share funds for dump clean up would be farmer-friendly and pro-environment. Let’s see if that idea flies very far.

Summary:
Nearly every farm has a dumpsite, which may have been inherited, and which may contain hazardous materials you don’t want to know about. Federal laws do not prohibit on-farm dump sites, but do expose farm operators and owners to environmental liability, should groundwater be polluted by them. Such dumps can also diminish land values, and even create problems if farmland is subject to a mortgage. In an effort to avoid such liability, and even take advantage of collecting revenue from recycling centers and scrap metal dealers, cleaning up the on-farm dump may be a good summertime project.