Toxic Utah: Trash, troubles are piling up

Utah faces a heap of toxic garbage concerns both real and imagined — and in some regards, residents of the Beehive State are their own worst enemy.

With our big families and lackluster conservation efforts, Utahns generate trash. Lots of it. And that trash production contributes to a larger environmental problem. Throughout the state, well-publicized incidents show growing concern about the health toll of incinerators, landfills and the parks and properties built on top of dumps:

• In Davis County, a group of residents is investigating what they consider to be a grave community danger — the plant where tons of their own garbage is burned. Some residents believe excessive dioxin emissions from the state's only household and commercial waste incinerator are giving them brain cancer. The Davis County Health Department, under urging from the public and activists, has initiated an investigation into residents' claims.

• In an unprecedented declaration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last month upgraded dioxin, which is produced at the Layton incinerator, to a "known human carcinogen," intensifying fears of residents and activists who have long worried that the chemical is hazardous to communities.

• In Utah County, residents have sued a developer who built a community of manufactured homes on the old Spanish Fork Landfill, which closed a decade ago. Syringes, medicine bottles, tires, asbestos and foul odors have emerged from the old dump site through the lawns and landscaping of Spanish Fork Ranch residents.

• This month the Utah County Health Department issued a strong warning about long-lasting landfill dangers. "It should be recognized that any dwelling placed on top of an active biological system, such as a landfill, is fraught with hazards," according to a department statement, which says this should be done "only as a last resort."

• In other areas, state officials are monitoring dumps where tests have given rise to concerns about groundwater contamination.

Who is to blame?

For years, Klint Woolsey enjoyed the peas and tomatoes, squash, radishes, corn and carrots he grew on his Layton property. Now he believes the produce might have been harmful instead of healthy.

Less than a mile away, two tall stacks from a Wasatch Energy Systems incinerator emit into the air byproducts from tons of trash burned every day — and some of those byproducts are toxic.

The 72-year-old Woolsey didn't connect the incinerator to his own life until a year ago, when he began stumbling while on vacation in Arizona with his wife. He was falling down, Woolsey said recently from his daughter's Layton home. Not acting himself. "Pretty soon, I didn't know anything."