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Fraught-with-woe efforts to dispose of 30,000 tons of construction debris have been complicated by the discovery of asbestos in the pile located near Interstate 80 in eastern Polk County.

The pile of debris, a 65,000-cubic-yard mix of ground-up wood, wallboard, construction tiles, scraps of steel and materials of unknown composition, is spilling off a concrete pad at an abandoned truck stop where it initially was to be used to fill in low-lying areas.

Instead, it is a mound of trouble drawing the attention of environmental regulators who are concerned that no paperwork has been filed to report the true makeup of the debris.

The pile has been left in the wake of the collapse of Regency development companies. It has resulted in fines against a former Regency company, Environmental Reclamation & Recycling, and, in its own way, is at the center of allegations of fraud and conspiracy against former Regency officials.

A nuisance and embarrassment

Environmental Reclamation was the last in a series of businesses established by brothers James and Robert Myers and others to recycle construction waste, sell what could be reused and dispose of what the Myerses and their representatives claimed would be a relatively harmless, soil-like substance.

Instead, the pile is a nuisance.

“It’s unsightly; it occasionally smells bad; it’s contaminating the surrounding area. Those are all bad things,” said Bondurant City Administrator Mark Arentsen, who added that his community would rather be known for its bike trails, small-town friendliness and development opportunities.

“It’s preventing developing the property,” Arentsen said.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR), along with private soil testers, has determined that the pile is an environmental hazard.

Discovery of asbestos is the latest finding to thwart efforts to cart the pile away from Bondurant.

Marion Burnside, a DNR environmental specialist focusing on asbestos and other airborne contaminants, sampled floor tiles and asphalt shingles in the pile – materials that were not supposed to be in the debris – and found that they contained asbestos fibers. The testing was required after a proposal was made to burn the debris as biofuel.

“A pitfall of the recycling industry is that it doesn’t always know what kinds of materials are in the waste it receives,” he said.

He noted that a single asbestos fiber can split into countless fibers, many smaller than bacteria. The substance, once considered a miracle material but later determined to have a killer attitude, is no longer produced in the United States because it can cause lung disease. However, it was common in older buildings and homes, found in plaster walls, fire-retardant and insulating materials, shingles, and ceiling and floor tiles.

“We’re not going to let anybody burn that,” Burnside said.

Its presence was supposed to be recorded and reported by Environmental Reclamation. By all accounts, it was not.

Broken promises

“The people who placed it there should be ashamed of themselves, and then to represent what they’re going to do and not to do it is not the way the things are supposed to be done,” Arentsen said. “It tars their reputations.

“They obviously did not do asbestos abatement before they took it out. I wonder what they did do?”

The pile accumulated after Metro Waste Authority refused to accept ground-up construction waste at its landfill, primarily because of uncertainty about the composition of the material. In addition, efforts to market some of the material were unsuccessful.

One temporary destination was a mulch company in Oskaloosa. That company accepted some material but eventually refused it because of concerns about its makeup.

The DNR levied $3,000 in fines against Environmental Reclamation in November for failing to fulfill a consent agreement to clean up the site. The violation carries additional penalties for each month the pile remains at the site.

Cost estimates for simple disposal of the pile exceed $1 million. Those costs will be higher now that it is known to contain asbestos because of special steps necessary to deliver it to a landfill.

Burnside said the material will have to be dampened and loaded into dump trucks with a special liner. Once placed in a landfill, the material’s location must be “known within inches,” he said.

The discovery further complicates the saga of the pile, which is on property currently owned by Altoona lawyer Ed Skinner and other partners. Skinner said he took on the Myerses’ interest in Mid Iowa Plaza LLC, the company that bought the 22-acre property in 2002.

Skinner is among a group of people trying to obtain $3 million in federal funds for a test project to dispose of the material at the Metro Park East Landfill.

“This isn’t a good time to be asking for money for anything,” Skinner said.

Skinner said he is waiting for direction from the DNR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or any other individual or agency that has an idea of what to do about the pile.

Pile stays put

“It sits there until these agencies make a decision on what can be done,” Skinner said. He noted that some EPA tests of the pile have not shown the presence of toxic substances.

However, it has been well documented that gypsum wallboard is generating hydrogen sulfide. In addition, Burnside noted, the EPA tests amounted to what are called “grab samples” of the material. Burnside’s instructions were to find material known to contain asbestos and test for the substance.

“There might be some confusion related to that,” he said.

Skinner noted that he was not responsible for dumping the material at the site and said he cannot afford to dispose of it. He said he would press the Myers family and Environmental Reclamation to pay for disposal if he thought they could pay the costs.

“There isn’t any place to go back; there’s no funds available,” Skinner said.

James and Robert Myers face several million dollars in court judgments favoring banks attempting to collect on development loans. They also are among the defendants in a civil fraud lawsuit stemming from the collapse of an entity that became Environmental Reclamation.

James Myers, an original manager in the company that purchased the Bondurant site, could not be reached for comment. He signed documents saying that ERR would remove the material, a DNR spokesman said.

“We have no reason to believe they are going to be complying with anything,” said Chad Stobbe of the DNR’s land quality division.

The DNR is preparing a case for possible prosecution by the Iowa attorney general’s office, he said.Bondurant is ready for action.

“The city council members and the mayor have been very patient about this issue; I think they’re done being patient,” Arentsen said.