CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — One of Chillicothe’s most long-tracked waste sites is entering a new phase.
The Paint Street Landfill — a closed industrial landfill tied to the old Mead paper mill era — is reaching the end of its 30-year post-closure care period in 2025. That “post-closure” label is the state’s way of saying: the landfill is closed, capped, and still has to prove it’s not causing harm. It’s the long tail of responsibility — maintaining the cover, controlling leachate, tracking landfill gas, and repeatedly sampling groundwater.
Now that clock is running out.
Here’s what happens next: the operator is expected to submit a post-closure certification and termination request in early 2026. Translation: they’ll ask Ohio EPA to sign off that the post-closure requirements have been met and to move into a more focused long-term monitoring and maintenance plan.
But here’s the part the public needs to understand: post-closure ending does not automatically mean the site is “clean,” and it does not mean oversight disappears overnight. Ohio EPA still has to review the filing, and the site’s monitoring and recovery systems continue while that review is underway.
Why this landfill is still a big deal
Paint Street Landfill didn’t become a “watch site” because someone dumped yard clippings.
The site accepted industrial waste tied to the former paper plant operation — including ash from the coal-fired power plant and other disposal materials. It’s been under corrective-action monitoring for decades, and part of the history here involves capturing and managing groundwater so it doesn’t migrate where it shouldn’t.
That’s the core reality: this site has a legacy of groundwater concern — and the only reason a landfill like this gets decades of attention is that regulators believed it needed it.
What the testing is showing
The latest monitoring data being circulated for Paint Street paints a mixed but important picture — the kind of thing you actually want transparency on when regulators start talking about “termination” and “focused monitoring.”
Recent reporting says several key action limits were not exceeded during the monitoring window — but the site still produces numbers that should keep the public paying attention:
- Chloride: reported as not exceeding its action limit during the period, with one noted instance slightly above the threshold (a maximum around the low-60s mg/L range).
- Arsenic: reported as not exceeding action levels during the most recent window described — with discussion pointing to local geochemical conditions as a possible factor in observed trends.
- Manganese: remains one of the most watched parameters, with at least one well reported in the hundreds of micrograms per liter range (including a value reported at 636 µg/L). The operator’s reporting frames manganese trends as tied to natural floodplain chemistry — but it’s also explicitly flagged as something the post-closure certification report is expected to address.
And if you go back into historical lab tables, you can see the kind of groundwater markers that have been tracked for years — things like chloride, iron, manganese, arsenic, and nitrate-nitrite — across wells such as P9-30 and P9-45, with results reported in mg/L and metals sometimes in very low detection ranges. That matters, because it shows this isn’t “new” attention — it’s long-running oversight with a paper trail.
With all the years of testing, one thing has been overlooked: forever chemicals known as PFAS. These compounds have been documented in the production of coated specialty papers.
What to watch next
Once a site transitions from broad post-closure obligations to “focused monitoring,” the key question becomes: focused on what? Fewer wells? Fewer tests? Less frequent sampling? Narrower lists of contaminants?
The Ohio EPA’s review — and any conditions it attaches — will determine how much independent verification remains in place going forward.
Bottom line: post-closure ending is a milestone. It’s not a victory lap.
Read the most recent report on the Paint Street Landfill here.