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There will still be a meeting Tuesday of the Cumberland County supervisors. The proposed Green Ridge landfill, however, won’t be on the agenda. On Friday, June 6, county officials announced that the hearing for the conditional use permit is being postponed to “a future date, time and location to be determined.”

No reason was given for the postponement. The Herald reached out to county officials on Friday and didn’t get an answer as to why it was postponed or which side decided to do that. The county’s statement, which was put out on its website and social media later on Friday, said that the project wasn’t being canceled.

“Negotiations related to the Conditional Use Permit and Host Agreement between Green Ridge and the counsel for Cumberland County are ongoing and will continue until a future public hearing date is determined,” the statement said. 

It’s worth noting that questions about the ongoing negotiations had been raised previously. In the May board of supervisors meeting, District 1 Supervisor Bryan Hamlet had argued the public hearing about Green Ridge needed to be postponed due to the fact negotiations weren’t complete. He pointed out the proposed host agreement, which would put in writing some of what the county would receive in this deal, wasn’t finished yet.

It hadn’t been approved by the county and a final version did not exist. Shouldn’t people know what the final version of that would look like before a vote is taken on the project? Hamlet had proposed they push the hearing back to August. But his proposal failed, as the other supervisors in that May meeting went silent and it died for lack of a second vote. Instead, that was when the majority decided to hold the hearing in June. Now it’s unclear when that hearing will take place. 

Decision will affect state application 

This decision to postpone the hearing comes seven days after the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) sent a letter to Green Ridge on May 30, confirming their application to the state was “administratively complete”. As we detailed in this week’s article, Green Ridge can file and move forward with both local and state applications at the same time, provided they include the correct documentation. That state application means the design will be reviewed, along with the liner system, stormwater management and even a post closure plan for down the road. Everything has to match state laws and state requirements. 

In the May 30 letter, state officials confirmed Green Ridge had filed all the required documents. However, since the hearing was postponed, that will soon change. An active conditional use permit is required for the application to move forward on the state level. The current one for Green Ridge, originally approved in June 2018, expires this month. 

“If the local government certification (the conditional use permit) that was approved under the Part A application is not supplied, has expired, or will expire during the Part B application review process, the application will be deemed incomplete until proper and valid documentation is submitted,” Irina Calos told us this week. She works as a communications manager for DEQ. 

Pressing pause on Green Ridge

So if the current conditional use permit expires without a new one in place, everything pauses. But that won’t happen immediately. In fact, Green Ridge still has a while to get a decision from Cumberland County. That’s because DEQ officials also set timelines this week for when they plan to start the application review. 

That state review is currently set to begin on Aug. 15 and finish no later than December 13. Again, that’s if the application has an active conditional use permit at that point. If nothing has happened by that date, then as Calos mentioned, the document will be considered incomplete and the review will be paused. If Cumberland supervisors have voted against the CUP by then, the project goes away. Or if Cumberland has approved the request by Green Ridge, then this state application will move forward. 

So now we wait. We wait to see when the hearing is rescheduled and what Cumberland supervisors decide to do when it does take place.