COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, OH – China rattles. Wheelchairs vibrate. Dogs wake.
And when Rumpke Waste & Recycling Services blasts away more land for a massive expansion of its Colerain Avenue landfill, nearby homes crack.
“It’s ridiculous they can do that to us,” said Mike Kuhl, who’s lived just south of the Rumpke blast zone for 35 years.
Rumpke says it takes care to minimize vibrations in blasting that began nearly seven years ago in the state’s largest landfill – and will do the same as it continues to blast in the decades to come. It also says that its blasts do not damage homes, since their ground and air vibrations are well below what industry standards and Ohio law allow.
Homeowners say their walls, ceilings, foundations and driveways prove otherwise.
Expansion OK’d in 2019 to keep landfill open 40 years
Rumpke got state government approval to expand, with little fanfare and minimal media attention, in 2019.
That took the boundaries of its Colerain site from 597 to 939 acres, an increase of 57%, government documents show. It took the space allowed for waste from 330 to 570 acres, an increase of 73%. And it boosted “authorized daily waste receipts” by 25%, from 10,000 to 12,500 tons a day.
Since then, Rumpke’s been adding the new 240 acres for garbage along its southern border in phases. It’s working from north to south to open eight phases or cells. It began using cell No. 1, with 41 acres, in August 2022. Cell 2, with 26 acres, followed soon after. Work on cell No. 3, with 31 acres, will end in September.
With that, Rumpke will have completed about 40% of its expansion. The balance, cells No. 4-8, will open as needed over the next 40 years, the expected additional life of what some Greater Cincinnati residents call Mount Rumpke.
“We want to make this facility last as long as possible,” Regional Landfill Manager J.T. Westerfield said of the site, in use since 1945 and now accepting trash from a 60-mile radius.
Rumpke has yet close any part of the landfill, still compressing and adding to its pre-2019 footprint. Officials believe the expansion will keep the facility open four more decades based on current use.
‘Every room has cracks,’ Stout Road couple says
Stout Road sits about 1 1/2 miles from Rumpke’s southern border, just inside Interstate 275.
That’s where Mike Hacker and Sandra Webb live in a brick ranch house built in 1957.
Hacker is a retired truck mechanic. Webb works from home, handling billing for a Florida employer. The couple devotes free time to caring for their two German Shepherds, tending to their extensive landscaping and tracking what they believe Rumpke is doing to their home.
Birds from Rumpke leave droppings on their cars and driveway. Smells from Rumpke make them close their windows and stay inside. But the blasts are the worst side effect of living in the shadow of the landfill, they said.
“My china cabinet rattles. My blinds are shaking,” Webb said. “Sometimes the dogs look up like ‘What was that?’ “
On the roof, nails on shingles were so loose that the couple decided to replace the roof in late June.
Most worrying, Webb said, “every room has cracks.” They crawl along the brick and mortar on the back of the house and in plaster on kitchen, hallway, bathroom and bedroom walls and ceilings.
“Everybody in this neighborhood has damage to their foundations,” Hacker said.
When the couple complained, Rumpke set up a seismograph in their yard. Operating on no- and low-blast days, it did not record anything problematic, Webb said.
The couple acknowledged the difficulty of proving that Rumpke’s blasts caused their home’s damage. “Can we say it’s Rumpke?” Webb asked. “Not 100%.”
Still, Hacker said he would not have bought on Stout some 20 years ago if he knew Rumpke would be expanding so much and so close.
Now, he doesn’t know if he and Webb can ever leave. “I could not sell this place in good conscience to anybody,” he said.
Blasts ‘shake my whole house,’ neighbor says
Rumpke neighbors spoke out about the blasts from the landfill after The Enquirer asked about them on a Facebook page called Colerain Speaks.
Rumbling and vibrations are harming their homes, they said in more than 80 comments. “The blasting feels like an earthquake,” one resident wrote. “It shakes my whole house,” another said.
Stephen Shad, who lives two houses from Mike Hacker and Sandra Webb on Stout, said mice can get through one opening in the exterior of his home.
He put painter’s tape over a crack in his bedroom wall to keep out cold air, he said. “It went from a minor crack to what I would consider a major one,” he said.
He spent $500 for an engineer to inspect the damage, he said. The engineer blamed cracks on rusting steel and settling, recommending repairs. After that, “if the blasting continues, we will happily provide a complimentary reassessment of your home,” his report to Shad said.
Judy Emerson, who lives across the street from Shad, ran outside the first time she heard a blast. “I thought something hit us,” she said.
Her adult son jumps a little when blasts vibrate his wheelchair, she said.
“He’ll just shake his head (and ask) ‘What was that?’ ” Emerson said.
Her reply: “That was just Rumpke.”
Around the corner on Pottinger Road, Mike and Trish Kuhl said the blasting has been constant the last three years.
“You have to watch how you stack the dishes in the cupboard,” Trish Kuhl said.
Mike Kuhl, like other neighbors, said the blasts come at the same time on weekday mornings. “When the whole house shakes, you know it’s 9:03 a.m.,” he said.
Rumpke confirmed that it currently blasts around that time two or three mornings a week. When it settled a zoning lawsuit against Colerain Township in 2016, it agreed to limit blasting from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
115 shots a year, on average, opens up landfill’s bedrock
Rumpke contractor Brandywine Explosives & Supply designs each “shot” – what it calls a blast event – to open up and scoop out shale and limestone.
Brandywine drills 50 to 75 holes, each about 26 feet deep and 4 1/2 inches around, for each shot. It loads the holes with an industrial explosive called ammonium nitrate fuel oil and gravel.
On blast mornings, traffic at the site is halted. Five minutes later, the explosive in each hole erupts, breaking up the bedrock and sending vibrations beyond Rumpke’s borders.
In mid-June, when The Enquirer visited, Rumpke completed its 60th shot of the year, preparing cell No. 3 for garbage. That followed an average of 115 a year over the past five years.
“I look at every seismic (reading of a) shot to see what we can do differently, to design a shot to minimize vibrations,” Westerfield said.
Reducing the holes in a shot, using less of the explosive material and altering the sequence of detonations are among the options the company uses to reduce vibrations, he said.
Alternate excavation methods take too long and cost too much, said Molly Yeager, Rumpke’s corporate communications manager. “We would not be able to ensure the region has access to a cost-effective waste disposal site,” she said.
Blasts don’t damage homes, report concludes
On and around Stout Road, shots come across as a thunderclap or low rumble, according to neighbors.
At ground level, they look exactly as imagined, with a moving line of dirt and debris rising from the air.
As for sound and shaking, measurements near the blast site show they are far less than allowed, a Rumpke contractor called Vibra-Tech Engineers said.
In a June 8 report, created in response to Enquirer questions about neighbor complaints, Vibra-Tech said it collected data from two seismographs near Rumpke’s southern border. It measured ground vibrations and what is called air overpressure (both audible and inaudible air blasts) of 628 blasts from the start of 2021 through this May.
Overall, ground vibration levels came in at about 12% of the limits established by Ohio law and industry standards set by the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Air overpressure levels were at about 41% of the recommended limits. And those were results on Rumpke property, not at Stout Road homes across I-275 where levels “would be expected to be lower,” the report said.
“Based on the monitoring data … blasting activities at Rumpke have not generated ground vibration or air overpressure levels that would be expected to cause cosmetic or structural damage to residential structures,” the Vibra-Tech report said.
‘We’re an open book,’ Rumpke says
Rumpke takes complaints from residents seriously and aims to be transparent about its operations, said Yeager, the company spokesperson. In mid-June, an open house drew 700 people for landfill tours and Q&A. Vibra-Tech was there to answer questions about blasting, Yeager said.
“You can go and talk to J.T. yourself,” at such meetings, she said. “We’re an open book.”
The company notes that homes can be stressed by many factors – thunderstorms, doors slamming, temperature, wind.
“Generally, people are very perceptive to extremely small amounts of ground motion,” a company newsletter about the landfill expansion said. Citing the Vibra-Tech monitoring, it said blasts “are not harmful to surrounding structures.”
Residents are not telling Colerain Township officials about Rumpke’s alleged damage to their homes, according to both township administrator Jeff Weckbach and Dan Unger, president of its board of trustees. “I don’t think anyone’s come in to us about the blasting,” Unger said.
Just one resident has mentioned blasting in complaints to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, records show. Asked for noise complaints about Rumpke from the last five years, the agency turned over 25 from a resident of Crest Road, about 2 miles north of Stout. Like other neighbors, the resident said blasts have damaged his home, but did not want to speak on the record with The Enquirer.
Objections about blasting handled by Hamilton County’s Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency have likewise been minimal, mentioned just six times in 546 complaints about Rumpke over the last five years, its data showed. That agency mostly responds to odor reports, with more than 4,700 such complaints about Rumpke from 2007 to 2025, according to a county report.
‘Gentler’ blasting? Free trash pick-up? Here’s what neighbors want
What do other Rumpke neighbors with damaged homes want from the company?
Some asked Rumpke to employ “gentler” blasting, using less explosive material for each shot. Some suggested a lawsuit or a fund to cover repairs. One homeowner suggested free trash service for affected homeowners.
Sandra Webb is considering a petition drive. She would like the shots to stop, full stop.
“Quit blasting,” she said, “so what we have left can be sellable.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: ‘Whole house shakes.’ Neighbors say Rumpke blasts damaging their homes
Reporting by Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
