Madison’s Secret Superfund Site

[Above: Truax Landfill, summer 2021, looking south from Bridges golf course–abandoned nuclear rocket bunkers in the center, a landfill monitoring well in the foreground, and the old Oscar Mayer factory in the far background. Photo: Maria Powell]

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Madison’s Secret Superfund Site: Truax Landfill

Sources for this article-see footnote below**

From the early 1900s through 1972, the City of Madison, U.S. military, Oscar Mayer and other industries, the University of Wisconsin, waste hauling companies, and many others dumped and burned wastes—including a plethora of hazardous materials and toxic chemicals—in the area northeast of Oscar Mayer (behind Pick ‘n Save). The area was also open to the general public for dumping for some time. This area eventually became the Truax Landfill.

The un-engineered Truax Landfill had no clay liner or leachate collection system, so the leachate easily drained down into groundwater. It violated state laws before and after it was closed. DNR documents say that till it was capped in the mid-1990s, approximately 6 to 10 million gallons of precipitation soaked into the landfill and became leachate each year.

Even after capping the landfill with clay, and building Bridges Golf Course over it, some leachate has continued to drain from it. How much drains from it now? Where is it going? What hazardous contaminants are in it? Is the surrounding community exposed to them in any way?

Nobody knows. Nobody is measuring.

A confusing history

The landfill history is complex and confusing. For most of its operation, the landfill was owned by the City of Madison, but parts of it were leased and used by the Department of Defense and/or operated by Oscar Mayer for periods of time. When the landfill was finally closed in 1972, and then transferred to the county the following year, it covered at least 40 acres (some sources say 60 acres) and contained about 1 million cubic yards of waste, from 22-39 feet thick.

[The former Burke sewage treatment plant, just south of the landfill, also has a convoluted toxic history that overlaps with this one–see some of that story here and here. To envision where these sites are in relation to each other, see this map].

In the 1960s, during the Cold War, the U.S. military built half-underground munitions bunkers in the landfill, where nuclear rockets were stored along with other munitions. City and other wastes were piled up around the bunkers–in berms that hide it from view from nearby public roads.

Leachate plume traveling toward Well 7, Oscar Mayer wells already contaminated, site placed on Superfund’s Hazard Ranking System list

After monitoring groundwater under the landfill from the late 1960s and through the 1970s and early 1980s, and finding evidence that contaminants were being drawn down into groundwater, in 1984 the city finalized a report showing a large toxic leachate plume under the landfill traveling toward Oscar Mayer wells and municipal Well 7 on N. Sherman Avenue. One Oscar Mayer well was already contaminated, and contamination was found at other company wells in the next few years. Contaminant levels in many wells exceeded existing standards (they included chlorinated solvents PCE & TCE, and more).

In 1989, the Truax Landfill area was scored high enough by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report (contracted by the Department of Defense) to be placed on the U.S. EPA Hazard Ranking System (HRS) . The HRS is the principal mechanism that the EPA uses to place uncontrolled waste sites on the National Priorities List or NPL (Superfund).

The city and county (and their attorneys) bickered intensively throughout the rest of the 1980s about who was responsible to pay for further investigations and remediation of the landfill and the leachate plume. The city felt the county (as the current owner of the landfill) was 100% responsible, but the county argued that costs should be split because the city had owned and used the landfill site for decades before Truax Field was purchased by the county.

DNR issues “consent orders” to the city and county

In late 1989, fed up with the inaction while the city and county argued, the DNR finally issued the first of several “consent orders” requiring the city and the county to further investigate/remediate the site. Subsequent landfill investigations were handled under CERCLA (Superfund), led by consultants contracted by the group of “potentially responsible parties” (PRPs)–the City of Madison, Dane County, Kraft/Oscar Mayer, the Army Corps of Engineers (for the Department of Defense)  and others. City and county attorneys guided the PRP consent order negotiation process and landfill investigations. After many years of tense negotiations, landfill investigation/remediation costs were split among the responsible parties.

Based on landfill contamination investigations and other evidence, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources also scored the Truax Landfill area high enough to be on the federal Superfund/Hazard Ranking System, and it was listed there in 1994.

PRPs decide to “avoid adverse publicity,” so the community is in the dark

Was the public aware of this? No. Early on in the negotiation process, right after the first consent order was drafted, the PRPs and their attorneys met internally and agreed that their goals were to “avoid site being designated a Superfund site” and “avoid adverse publicity.” So they kept the Superfund status of the site hush-hush and tightly controlled information shared with the media and public about it. They also collectively agreed that they would work to “permit development at air park” and “keep costs to a minimum” throughout the process.

Sadly, protecting public health was not among their stated goals.

Despite fairly involved Superfund/CERCLA community engagement requirements, there’s no evidence that the community surrounding the landfill was ever informed about what was buried there, what kinds of contaminants had been found to date, how they could be exposed to them, effects on their drinking water, Starkweather Creek, fish and wildlife, and/or the site’s Superfund status.

In addition to being uninformed, the community definitely wasn’t engaged in discussions–forget about decisions–about how the landfill would be investigated and remediated. Violating CERCLA community engagement requirements, even as government and responsible party negotiations and decisions about the landfill dragged on behind closed doors for many years, the PRPs did not engage the north side community until the very last stage of purported “remediation” in 1993 or 1994 (it’s not clear exactly when public meetings were held) when the landfill was being capped–and even this engagement was token. At that point, the community was primarily engaged in discussions about how the “clay borrow” process would be handled. Whether they realized it or not, nearly all of the critical decisions about the landfill had already been made behind closed doors in years prior.

Was the site remediated? How is it being monitored now?

What happened after 1993-94? Was the landfill ever officially placed on the NPL? It’s not clear. Regardless, the landfill was never actually remediated. It was simply capped with clay, and eventually the Bridges Golf Course was built over it and opened in 2000 (Bridges leases the land from the County). Other buildings, including a Montessori School and brewery/restaurant, were built on the edge of the landfill. Dane County currently monitors methane gas and a small number of contaminants in shallow groundwater, in a limited area under and around the landfill. Many of the toxic contaminants likely to be there, based on the kinds of wastes buried there, are not measured.*

Nobody knows how far and wide the toxic leachate plume that was already documented by the ’70s and ’80s has traveled over decades. The city’s 1984 report indicated that it was moving west towards municipal Well 7 on Sherman Ave. Iron, manganese, and PCE–all of which have been documented at problematic levels in groundwater near the Truax Landfill for years–are now in Well 7 (which since 2015 has had an iron/manganese filter paid for by the the ratepayers–us). PFAS has also recently shown up in this well. Could this be from the landfill? Maybe. But nobody is testing to find out.

Nobody monitors Starkweather Creek along the eastern edge of the landfill for contaminants likely oozing from the landfill, even though the city and county have the authorities and abilities to do so.

Are people in the community exposed to contaminants from the landfill?

Perhaps most problematically, nobody has ever assessed whether people in the neighborhood are exposed to hazardous contaminants discharged or emitted from this landfill into the area’s soils, groundwater, surface water and/or air (including from the methane extraction systems at the landfill).

As far as we can tell, most (if not all) of the toxic wastes buried there over decades are still there, surrounded by homes, schools, and businesses. The former nuclear bunkers are still there (see photo above).  Leachates still ooze into Starkweather Creek and the deeper contaminant leachate plume still travels under adjacent neighborhoods. Toxic contaminant vapors may be seeping into people’s homes in surrounding neighborhoods, as well as into nearby businesses and schools.

But again, nobody knows—because nobody is measuring. We can’t take steps to protect people if we don’t know they are exposed.

How did this happen?

Below are the blow-by-blow gory details of the Truax Landfill saga:

Part I: What’s in the Truax Landfill?

Part II: Toxic plume under the landfill, going towards Well 7: Who is responsible?

Part III: DNR issues consent orders to city and county, Superfund negotiated behind closed doors

Part IV: The plot thickens: Consent order negotiations drag on, city/county consultants conclude landfill doesn’t affect Starkweather Creek, propose “passive remediation” (doing nothing) and capping the landfill. Meanwhile, the community remains mostly in the dark…

Part V: Problem solved! County takes over Truax Landfill, Bridges Golf Course built over it.

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*Compounds that are likely leaching from the landfill: chlorinated compounds (PCE, TCE, vinyl chloride), fluorinated compounds (including PFAS), pesticides, plastics compounds, iron, manganese, other metals, PCBs, petroleum compounds, and many more; some chlorinated compounds and metals are assessed in the ongoing county monitoring, but many of the chemicals likely to be there are not].

**The Truax Landfill saga was based on reviews of old newspaper stories (from NewspaperArchive.com), publicly available government reports, and hundreds of government reports and communications obtained through open records requests. Given the many missing, withheld and/or incomplete public records–and numerous internal communications that were not written and therefore off the public record– there are a variety of unknowns, uncertainties and gaps in this story. Citations are removed. If you have questions about this history, know about details I didn’t include, and/or are interested in sources for any of specific points in the story, please email mariapowell@mejo.us.