Alabama unequipped to handle Moody landfill fire, investigation finds

Alabama officials were slowed by inexperience, lack of equipment and jurisdictional confusion when trying to battle a blaze rapidly taking hold underneath a vast landfill north of Birmingham late last year, according to a report released Friday by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

“We have never seen this type of emergency – a large, underground fire emitting smoke affecting possibly thousands of residents and businesses – in this state before, and we simply were not equipped to deal with it,” Sen. Lance Bell, R-Pell City, said in a news release accompanying the report.

The landfill fire, which started near Moody in November 2022, still has not gone out entirely, even after a dirt and grass cover was installed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“The fire is expected to continue to smolder for an indefinite time, releasing occasional odor and smoke,” the report states.

But state and local authorities have turned most of their attention to determining what went wrong in the state’s response to the fire and what can be done better next time.

The report was prepared by a working group of state and local elected officials, as well as the heads of ADEM, the Alabama Forestry Commission, the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, and the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

The slopes of the former Environmental Landfill, Inc disposal area have been covered with dirt and planted with grass to prevent erosion.

They found challenges from the start in determining who was responsible.

“Response to the fire by government agencies at the state and local level was hampered by questions of whether the agencies had legal authority to take action to extinguish a fire on private property,” the report said.

The report recommended a review of the Alabama Emergency Management Act of 1955 to ensure that emergency responders have the flexibility to respond to situations like the Moody fire, and of state and local laws to ensure responders can access private property in emergency situations.

“We need to make sure everyone who should have a responsibility during an emergency, from the local government to state agencies, knows what his or her role should be,” Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, said. “It also needs to be clear to everyone involved what the criteria are for activating the emergency plan.”

The report did not recommend any changes to the way the state regulates green waste landfills, like the one that caught fire.

The Environmental Landfill, Inc. site — located about 20 miles northeast of Birmingham, between the suburbs of Moody and Trussville — had been used for more than 10 years as a dumping ground of vegetative wastes, such as trees, limbs, vegetation or certain inert materials such as concrete or asphalt.

The pile of dead trees and other waste was more than 100 feet high in places, according to the report.

However, ADEM said that those materials are not subject to regulations that govern other kinds of landfills, and that the agency had no authority to respond to the fire.

“Because state law does not allow for the regulation of vegetative waste disposal, the site was not subject to regulation by ADEM,” the report states.

“ADEM had no authority or responsibility to act under the state EOP, and no firefighting ability.”

ADEM inspectors found unauthorized waste on multiple occasions at the site, and warned the operator that the site represented a fire hazard.

“ADEM inspectors also notified the private business operator that the site posed a fire hazard due to the amount of vegetative waste at the site, but ADEM had no authority to force the site operator to take corrective steps,” the report said.

But the report also said that the amount of unauthorized waste was “incidental” and was not related to the fire.

The report points out that “[a] fire of this nature and scope had not occurred before in the state, and there was uncertainty as to which state or local agency should take the lead in responding to the fire,” and that state and local entities lacked the experience and equipment needed to battle an underground fire like this one.

Members of the working group were:

State Sen. Lance Bell
State Rep. Danny Garrett
Lance LeFleur, Director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management
Jeff Smitherman, Director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency
Rick Oates, State Forester with the Alabama Forestry Commission
Rick Pate, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries
Sonny Brasfield, Executive Director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama
Greg Cochran, Executive Director of the Alabama League of Municipalities

The fire was first reported on Nov. 25, and blazed for months afterword, causing locals to fear for their safety and inundating homes with smoke, causing property damage.

The EPA took over response to the fire on January 18, after air samples showed potentially dangerous levels of chemicals in the smoke. The federal agency then used contractors it keeps on retainer to compact and smother the fire, then cover it with 2,499 truckloads of dirt from a nearby pit, then plant grasses on top to prevent erosion.

The site continues to smolder underneath the dirt cover.