Dive Brief:
- Renewed Efforts of Neighbors Against Landfill Expansion (RENALE), a group consisting of local community members, filed a federal Clean Water Act lawsuit against three entities tied to a compost project at the Sonoma County landfill in California.
- The group alleges wastewater from compost at the landfill site is contaminating a local waterway, the Stemple Creek.
- The following groups are named in the lawsuit: Sonoma County, the owner of the landfill, the Sonoma Waste Management Agency, which manages the county's green waste program, and Sonoma Compost, the private company that operates the compost project.
Dive Insight:
The lawyer for the plaintiffs is requesting that a judge block additional green waste from being brought into the landfill site. The group is also asking that the material currently on site be removed and that the judge issue fines of $37,500 per day for each violation of the Clean Water Act, for a total penalty of $6.75 million.
In April, regulators ordered the site to prevent the wastewater from reaching the creek by October 1, 2014.
