Written by A STATE ORDER THAT KEEPS TOXIC LEACHATE FLOWING TO THE PLANT
Marion’s wastewater system is under immediate strain from three linked problems: a state‑ordered extension of landfill monitoring and leachate handling, a rapid push for a fully forgiven state loan to build a separate leachate pretreatment facility, and administrative changes in the Schertzer era that let officials alter toxic discharge thresholds without a public City Council vote. Together, those moves raise the risk of plant failure, contaminated biosolids, and raw sewage backing into homes.
On January 29, 2026, the Ohio EPA entered a Director’s Final Findings and Orders (DFFO) that halted the scheduled end of post‑closure care at the Marion City Landfill and required continued operation of the landfill’s leachate management system. The agency found ongoing groundwater contamination and explosive gas migration at the closed landfill and concluded the site still poses a risk to human health and the environment. The landfill — closed in 1992 and located at 2100 Marion‑Agosta Road — continues to generate a concentrated, chemically complex leachate stream that the city has been routing to the municipal Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) since the late 1990s.
Groundwater monitoring showed exceedances of chloride and sodium at wells W‑28 and W‑25, indicating that the landfill’s protective caps and recompacted soil barriers are no longer preventing percolation. Methane monitoring also triggered contingency responses multiple times, including at the Nature Center building located within 1,000 feet of the waste placement limits. That structure now requires a permanent explosive‑gas alarm due to the risk of methane accumulation.
The DFFO’s operational requirement has a blunt consequence for the WPCP: the plant must continue to accept a toxic influent stream that can destabilize its biological treatment processes. As one record states, “The January 2026 DFFO ordered the city to operate and maintain this leachate management system indefinitely, effectively tethering the WPCP to a toxic influent stream that jeopardizes its biological stability.” That obligation sits alongside a municipal reality: treating the landfill runoff provides a meaningful portion of the plant’s revenue, creating a painful tradeoff between short‑term budget needs and long‑term operational stability.
WHY LANDFILL LEACHATE IS A SPECIAL THREAT TO BIOLOGICAL TREATMENT
Municipal plants like Marion’s rely on living microbial communities in aeration tanks to remove organic matter and nutrients. Landfill leachate is not ordinary sewage: it is concentrated, often high in ammonia, salts, heavy metals, and emerging contaminants such as PFAS. When untreated leachate enters a biological system, those constituents can cause a “toxic shock” that kills the microbes and collapses treatment performance. A collapse can lead to permit violations, fish kills, and raw or poorly treated discharges to the receiving stream.
Leachate from older municipal landfills typically contains high‑strength ammonia and PFAS compounds such as PFOA, PFOS, and GenX — all of which are now subject to strict action levels under Ohio EPA’s PFAS Action Plan. Standard municipal plants cannot remove PFAS; they simply pass them through to the river or concentrate them in biosolids. This means Marion’s current practice of blending raw leachate into the main plant creates both operational and regulatory exposure.
The city’s financial dependence on leachate complicates the technical fix. Processing landfill leachate supplies roughly 15% of the WPCP’s annual revenue, according to municipal budget notes and meeting records. That revenue stream helps balance a multi‑million‑dollar operating budget, which is why the administration has pursued a rapid funding strategy to build a separate pretreatment facility rather than immediately stopping leachate acceptance.
THE “ZERO‑DOLLAR” LOAN: A FAST TRACK TO A DEDICATED LEACHATE FACILITY
In July 2026 the City moved to apply for a Water Pollution Control Loan Fund (WPCLF) agreement described in committee as a “zero‑dollar” loan for a leachate facility. Under current WPCLF rules, federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) capitalization grants targeted at emerging contaminants can be awarded as principal forgiveness, effectively turning a loan into a grant for eligible projects. By framing a standalone leachate pretreatment project as an “emerging contaminants” and PFAS remediation effort, Marion is positioned to secure heavy subsidy — potentially full principal forgiveness — to build advanced tertiary treatment such as reverse osmosis or specialized carbon filtration.
The city’s strategy is twofold:
- Preserve the 15% revenue stream by continuing to accept leachate after pretreatment.
- Shield the main plant’s biological processes from toxic shock by isolating PFAS, ammonia, and heavy metals before they reach the aeration tanks.
The urgency of the loan application reflects the severity of the DFFO mandate. Without a dedicated pretreatment facility, Marion’s main plant remains vulnerable to biological collapse — a failure that would send untreated wastewater directly into the Little Scioto River.
Schertzer era GOVERNANCE CHANGE THAT REMOVED PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF NUMERIC LIMITS
A less visible but equally consequential change occurred in March 2020, when Schertzer era Marion City Council passed Ordinance 2020‑15.
That ordinance removed hard numeric pollutant limits from the municipal code and directed that local limits be maintained in an administrative document on the WPCP webpage. In practice, that shift moved numeric local limits out of the codified, public legislative process and into a changeable administrative file.
The ordinance removed codified limits for arsenic, cadmium, zinc, antimony, chromium, selenium, copper, lead, molybdenum, silver, mercury, and nickel — all of which had previously been fixed in Chapter 911.42. Removing these limits eliminated the requirement for public readings, debate, and votes before changing toxic discharge thresholds.
The practical effect became clear in February 2026, when the Ohio EPA approved a Substantial Pretreatment Program Modification for Marion. The approved change lowered the copper limit from 1.8 mg/L to 1.0 mg/L and raised the molybdenum limit from 0.2 mg/L to 0.6 mg/L — a 200% increase for molybdenum. Because the numeric limits were no longer codified in city ordinance, these changes were negotiated administratively between the WPCP and Ohio EPA without a City Council vote or a public hearing.
Raising molybdenum is not a technical footnote. Heavy metals accepted into a municipal plant partition into biosolids (sewage sludge). If biosolids with elevated molybdenum are land‑applied, molybdenum accumulates in soils and forage. Ruminant livestock exposed to high molybdenum can develop molybdenosis, a severe condition caused by induced copper deficiency; humans face chronic exposure risks including joint and reproductive effects. The administrative pathway used here removed the democratic friction that would normally accompany such a change and obscured who benefits from the relaxed threshold.
THE COLLECTION SYSTEM IS FAILING — AND HOMES ARE PAYING THE PRICE
Beyond chemical and regulatory risks, Marion’s physical sewer network is under severe stress. The WPCP’s design capacity is 10.5 million gallons per day (MGD); the plant treats an average of 8.5 MGD, but roughly 3 MGD of that is stormwater inflow and infiltration (I&I). When more than a third of a plant’s flow is clean rainwater, the municipality is literally paying to treat the weather.
Marion has approximately 350 miles of sanitary sewer and 4,400 storm catch basins — a network riddled with aging clay tile, offset joints, cracked pipes, and deteriorated manholes. Illegal downspout connections and cross‑connections between storm and sanitary lines further increase inflow.
During storms the system surcharges, creating back‑pressure that seeks the lowest exit — often a basement floor drain. The result has been repeated basement sewage blowouts on streets such as Richmond Avenue and Jamaica Avenue. Local contractors report using extreme measures — 4,000 PSI hydro‑jetting and heavy vac trucks — to keep laterals flowing; those same extreme pressures, combined with municipal back‑pressure, contribute to the failure of basement test plugs and rapid inundation of homes with raw sewage.
Real estate turnover patterns on affected streets — repeated flips and the installation of water‑resistant flooring — provide a secondary indicator of chronic flooding. Multiple Richmond Avenue properties have been purchased, renovated with water‑resistant materials, and flipped within short timeframes — a pattern consistent with repeated basement flooding.
DOWNSTREAM STAKES: THE LITTLE SCIOTO RIVER SUPERFUND CLEANUP
Marion’s treated effluent discharges to the Little Scioto River, which is an active federal Superfund site. Decades of industrial contamination have left the riverbed saturated with toxic sediments, primarily PAHs, and a large remediation project is underway to dredge and remove contaminated material. That cleanup will generate roughly 129,500 cubic yards of contaminated sediment along an 8.5‑mile stretch of the river.
The dredged material must be stabilized with calciment before transport and disposal at the County Environmental Landfill of Wyandot in Carey, Ohio. Because the cleanup is publicly funded, the Ohio EPA issued a specific exemption allowing disposal without the standard $4.75‑per‑ton state solid‑waste fee — a waiver that saves the project hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The cleanup creates a stark paradox: federal and state dollars are being spent to remove decades of contamination from the river while the upstream municipal plant is hydraulically overloaded and administratively permitted to accept higher levels of certain heavy metals. Any plant failure — a toxic shock from leachate, a biosolids violation, or a raw sewage bypass during storms — would directly threaten the Superfund remediation and invite swift enforcement from both Ohio EPA and U.S. EPA.
THE CHOICE AHEAD
Marion faces a compound crisis: a toxic leachate stream the state requires the city to handle, a municipal plant financially dependent on treating that stream, an administrative process that removed public oversight of local pollutant limits, and a failing collection system that is already flooding homes. The combination of these pressures places the WPCP — and the Little Scioto River cleanup downstream — at real risk. The city can choose transparency and interim engineering controls now, or it can risk repeating the regulatory cliff that once triggered a stop‑build order and a costly emergency upgrade.
Ohio EPA DFFO and subsequent pretreatment approval documents make clear the operational and regulatory stakes; for example, public records note that the DFFO requires continued operation of the landfill leachate system and that the February 13, 2026 pretreatment modification altered local limits for copper and molybdenum. “By quietly raising the Molybdenum limit from 0.2 mg/L to 0.6 mg/L, the city administration has significantly increased the toxic burden on its own sludge disposal processes,” a public summary of the pretreatment change states.
WORKS CITED (CLICK HERE)
1. Ohio EPA Director’s Journal — Landfill Post-Closure Care Extension (DFFO)
- Direct PDF Link: Ohio EPA eDocument Portal – Doc ID 3986053
- Investigative Relevance: Serves as the primary evidence for the enforcement action taken on January 29, 2026. This legally binding order details the ongoing groundwater contamination (specifically sodium and chloride spikes at tracking wells W-28 and W-25), logs the recurrent explosive methane gas migrations near the Nature Center, and mandates that the City of Marion maintain the 2100 Marion-Agosta Road leachate management system indefinitely.
2. Ohio EPA Director’s Journal — Little Scioto River Superfund Fee Exemption
- Direct PDF Link: Ohio EPA eDocument Portal – Doc ID 3123666
- Investigative Relevance: Verifies the operational parameters and logistics of the downstream federal remediation project. This document confirms the planned removal of 129,500 cubic yards of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) contaminated sediment, the mandatory stabilization of material using Calciment, transport to the County Environmental Landfill of Wyandot in Carey, and the state-issued waiver bypassing the standard $4.75-per-ton solid waste disposal fee.
3. City of Marion Sewer Use & Local Limits Decentralization Ordinance
- Direct PDF Link: City of Marion Document Center – Ordinance 2020-15 PDF
- Investigative Relevance: Documents the legislative shift that removed public oversight from municipal industrial discharge limits. This specific file proves that City Council passed Ordinance 2020-15 to amend Chapter 911, stripping fixed numeric thresholds for 12 toxic heavy metals out of the codified municipal code and shifting them into an administrative file modified without mandatory public hearings or legislative votes.
4. Ohio WPCLF Funding Guidelines & Emerging Contaminants Rules
- Direct PDF Link: Ohio EPA Assets Portal – WPCLF Program Management Plan
- Investigative Relevance: Establishes the regulatory blueprint for the city’s funding strategy. This state management plan outlines how federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) capitalization funds are routed through the Water Pollution Control Loan Fund (WPCLF), providing up to 100% principal forgiveness for local remediation projects specifically engineered to intercept emerging contaminants like PFAS.
5. State of Ohio PFAS Action Plan
- Direct Link: Ohio EPA PFAS Action Plan Resource Page
- Investigative Relevance: Supplies the technical framework for the emerging contaminant hazards discussed in this report. This inter-agency plan outlines strict state action thresholds for compounds such as PFOA, PFOS, and GenX, highlighting the biological vulnerabilities and regulatory liabilities municipal treatment plants face when processing raw landfill runoff.
6. Marion Water Pollution Control Plant Draft NPDES Permit
- Direct PDF Link: Ohio EPA Assets Portal – Marion Draft NPDES Permit 2PD00011
- Investigative Relevance: Confirms the baseline operating capacity and effluent parameters of the municipal treatment infrastructure. National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit No. 2PD00011 dictates the plant’s 10.5 MGD hydraulic design limits and serves as the legal mechanism used by state regulators to track municipal bypasses and industrial pretreatment modifications.
7. US EPA Little Scioto River Superfund Funding Announcement
- Direct Link: U.S. EPA Press Release – Little Scioto River Clean-Up Funding
- Investigative Relevance: Confirms the federal designation and scope of the active Superfund infrastructure project directly downstream from the municipal wastewater discharge point, establishing the ecological stakes of upstream operational failures.