Cryptic Supreme Court order ends York County’s landfill fight

York County fought the state and the state won.

The outcome of the county’s battle against the S.C. Department of Health & Environmental Control over an unwanted landfill might make local governments across the state a little uneasy.

York took DHEC to court after the agency ignored an emergency ordinance that county councilors passed to keep a waste management company from building a landfill in Rock Hill.

The county argued that DHEC had supplanted a local government’s right to develop its own waste management plan. DHEC contended that it, and not the county, had the sole authority to issue landfill permits.

After the S.C. Court of Appeals panel sided with the state in a 2-1 ruling in 2012, the Supreme Court granted the county’s petition to review the ruling. But the high court determined on May 14 that the petition was improvidently granted, bringing an abrupt but anticlimactic end to the dispute.

The court’s order is two-sentences long and lacks an explanation.

“I think they probably just looked at the Court of Appeals decision and found that it stood on its own. That’s what I would assume, but since they didn’t say why they dismissed it I can’t speculate,” said Susan Lake, an attorney for DHEC.

She added, “I think it just upheld what we’ve always known was our authority, that DHEC decides whether to issue a permit based on consistency determinations. The Court of Appeals said DHEC was doing its job.”

The landfill company’s attorney, Thomas Lavender Jr. of Nexsen Pruet in Columbia, and an attorney for the county, Amy Armstrong of the S.C. Environmental Law Project in Pawleys Island, did not respond to interview requests.

In an earlier interview, Armstrong said that if the court allowed DHEC to sidestep York County‘s landfill ordinance, it would send a message to other state agencies that they too could ignore local legislation.

Court of Appeals Judge James Lockemy wrote in his dissent that local governments should be able to determine their own waste management plans, even though the state has the authority to permit landfills. He worried that the majority opinion could give too much power to state agencies.

Lockemy wrote: “The effect of the majority decision permits an agency of this state to ignore legislation adopted and duly passed by representatives of the people of a local government.”

Since the case appears to have reached its end, Lake expected that construction on the landfill would begin soon. It will be able to handle 58,300 tons of trash each year.

According to Armstrong’s prior comments, the county’s two existing landfills can process more than 139,000 tons of garbage annually, though its residents generate less than 124,000 tons.

Follow Phillip Bantz on Twitter @SCLWBantz