Neighbors say stench from Zimmer landfill near Moscow causing breathing problems

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]You can't see the Zimmer landfill from this road in Washington Township, but you can certainly smell it. It's a strong odor of rotten eggs that comes and goes with the wind, and residents say it is making them sick. This was once prime farmland in Claremont County.

[00:00:17]It became a landfill for the Zimmer coal plant more than 30 years ago. Residents say the stench started around the time the coal plant closed in 2022. And the second that you start smelling it, you feel like you are going to vomit immediately. It is so intense. It just takes over everything. It is awful.

[00:00:35]Rhonda Britain lives across the street from the landfill with her husband Brian.

[00:00:40]>> And sometimes where we're at, it lasts for days.

[00:00:42]>> They say the smell is worse when it rains and at night or in the early morning hours when the dew is heavy. At night, it penetrates through the windows and that is really bad. Carla Benjamin lives a half mile from the landfill. She first spoke to the eye team three years ago about the same smell, which residents say has gotten much worse.

[00:01:04]Before it would be a couple times a week. Now it's almost every single night. Many residents have complained to the Ohio EPA and the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency over the past few months.

[00:01:16]A spokesperson for Texas-based Vistra Corp, which owns the Zimmer site, says the landfill is still accepting waste from their other local plant, Miami Fort. That plant in North Bend is still operational. Vistra says it is using multiple systems to control the smell at the landfill. But residents say that hasn't helped. There's nothing we can do. No matter who we reach out to, no one will do anything.

[00:01:41]>> So, I went to Tom Smar for answers. He's a deputy managing attorney for Earth Justice, the nation's leading environmental law nonprofit, and he had this to say about the sludge coming into the landfill from Miami Fort.

[00:01:55]>> That type of waste in particular is associated with sulfur emissions. What the scrubber sludge is essentially is it's the sulfur that gets stripped out of the smoke stack when the power plant burns coal. So, it has a very high sulfur content. These landfills are supposed to do extensive monitoring to make sure residents are not exposed to high levels of hydrogen sulfide.

[00:02:19]>> Breathing high levels of hydrogen sulfide can be very harmful depending on the level of exposure. It can be everything from a bad smell or giving you a headache all the way up to serious lung damage, respiratory damage, or even brain damage. SMAR says state agencies like the Ohio EPA should be doing more.

[00:02:40]An Ohio EPA spokesperson says Vistra located the source of the smell to a pipe that carries lee from an older section of the landfill. But the spokesperson says the Ohio EPA has no enforcement authority over the odor here. Neither does the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency.

[00:02:59]>> What's being described here is unacceptable. People should not have to live with this level of odor and and harm to their daily lives.

[00:03:06]>> SMAR said he plans to investigate what's happening here. The Ohio EPA said jurisdiction over the landfill falls to the US EPA, which as of yesterday still had not gotten back to me after one week. I will continue to follow this story and push for answers. Paula Christian, WCPO9 IT