The Ashcake Road Landfill has operated for around 30 years in Hanover County. And during a Thursday planning commission meeting, the site’s parent company, Leadbetter Inc., will seek approval to expand and convert land into more space for waste and recycling.
The request has been met with resistance from local residents, particularly those from the Brown Grove community, a historically African American neighborhood near the landfill.
The 200-acre Leadbetter property, located near Interstate 95 and Lewistown Road, was originally approved in 1987. The site accepts around 165 tons of waste and processes a maximum of 500 tons per day.
While most of the site is used as a landfill, around 40 acres of the property are designated as borrow pits — large dugouts used to excavate soil, gravel and dirt for commercial use.
Concerns over effects to the community’s health and environment if Leadbetter converts around 30-acres of borrow pits to landfill follow a history of compliance issues, according to county planning documents.
Over the property’s lifespan, county planners found the landfill was issued multiple Department of Environmental Quality warning letters for not submitting monitoring reports in a timely manner. DEQ also identified issues at the site during a 2016 inspection, which were later remedied. And in 2003, “an employee was accidentally killed on the site,” according to county planning documents.
Pat Hunter-Jordan, president of Hanover’s NAACP chapter, and dozens of residents presented Beaverdam Supervisor Jeff Stoneman with this information during a March 10 town hall meeting.
“We are hoping and praying that it is going to go the way the neighborhood wants because they don't want a landfill,” Hunter-Jordan recently told VPM News. “They’re trying to build that community and bring in homes, but who wants to live by a landfill?”
VPM News reached out to attorneys from the Roth Jackson consulting firm, who are representing Leadbetter Inc. during Thursday’s land-use hearing to respond to the claims.
Andrew Condlin, the lead attorney, declined to comment on the case before the planning commission meets. However correspondence between Hanover and Leadbetter’s legal team provides some insight on their position.
In the document, company attorneys assert the landfill property is actually located adjacent to — and not within — the Brown Grove district boundaries established in 2022. The legal firm added that the company understands the potential impact that modifications to the landfill could have on the community, and will seek to comply with the design and building standards of the historic district.
Leadbetter Inc. also offered to pay for and build a sidewalk along the property, pave an access road connecting to Ashcake Road, and obtain the proper DEQ permits before repurposing a portion of the landfill site.
Nick Moore, the landfill’s manager and part-owner of Leadbetter Inc., has also faced criticism for what some community members see as broken promises, Hunter-Jordan said.
In 2017, when the company received approval to use additional land as excavation pits, Moore’s legal representative at the time said the property owner had no need to expand any further.
“Mr. Moore has no intention of coming back, asking for, changing the borrow area into a landfill,” Scott Courtney, who previously represented the company, told the board in 2017. “That is what happened the original time, back in ’87 and ’94. But that is not the intention at all at this point.”
Neighbors have united over the issue: An online petition demanding the landfill expansion be stopped has garnered over 330 signatures.
Andrew Pompei, Hanover’s deputy director of planning, said the country appreciates the engagement residents have provided thus far.
“As with all land-use cases, Hanover County and the Board of Supervisors encourage residents to share their input throughout the process,” Pompei recently told VPM News. “We remain committed to listening to the concerns and perspectives of our community as this case moves forward.”
Hanover’s planning commission will review the proposed landfill expansion Thursday. Regardless of its recommendation, the proposal will next head to the Board of Supervisors for a final vote.
