The Days Cove section of Gunpowder Falls State Park is a forested wetland, where bald eagles perch in towering trees, great blue herons stalk the water’s edge and bass dart beneath the surface.

It’s also home to a towering rubble landfill.

The eastern Baltimore County construction waste facility, operated by Days Cove Reclamation Co., leases a section of the park from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The site collected over 124,000 tons of waste last year, according to state environmental records, nearly all of it debris such as drywall, brick and asphalt.

The landfill has come under renewed scrutiny as it seeks a state permit to double the amount of treated leachate — or “trash juice,” formed as rainwater percolates through waste — it discharges into tributaries of the Gunpowder River. Environmental groups, community associations and local elected officials have urged the state to reject the permit.

Public parklands are supposed to be preserved for conservation and recreation, and it is rare for them to host landfills. Even proposals to build such facilities just outside public parks have sparked intense backlash.

So why has this popular state park included a landfill for decades?

The Banner reviewed leases, transcripts of public meetings and other state records dating back more than 30 years to learn more about this unusual arrangement.

Based on those documents and partial financial figures provided by the DNR, The Banner estimates that the state has collected around $20 million in lease payments from the landfill over the past three decades — prompting some to question whether the state has a conflict of interest as it considers the proposed permit.

“You’re both the landlord and the regulator, all at the same time,” said Del. Ryan Nawrocki, a Republican who represents the area in the state legislature. “That is what’s troubling to me.”

‘A seat in heaven’

Before it was incorporated into one of Maryland’s largest state parks, the land surrounding Days Cove belonged to two brothers, Stanley and Joseph Smuck, who ran a number of businesses there. One of them was a 24-acre rubble landfill.

When the state purchased 456 acres from the Smucks in 1986 as part of an expansion of Gunpowder Falls State Park, the landfill, operated at the time by Enviro-Gro Technologies, was allowed to remain.

The sale gave the Smucks the right to make money off the facility for five years before the state took it over in 1991. Under the DNR’s initial one-year lease with Enviro-Gro Technologies, which required approval by the Board of Public Works, the state received 25% of the facility’s gross revenue as rent.

“As revenues increase, so does the money to the State of Maryland,” Michael Nelson, then an assistant secretary for the DNR, told the state spending board at a 1992 meeting, according to a transcript. “So we’re very, very pleased with this arrangement.”

One of the board’s members, longtime Comptroller Louis Goldstein, personally toured the Days Cove site and helped secure the lease. He agreed that a rubble landfill could be a valuable state property.

“You know, it’s hard to get a facility like this,” said Goldstein, then in his 33rd year as comptroller, at the 1992 meeting. “If you had to start at scratch today to get a facility like this, you’d — it’s just like getting a seat in heaven.”

When asked by Goldstein whether the landfill abided by environmental standards, Nelson said the facility had been in “complete compliance” with its state permits.

Enviro-Gro Technologies presented the board a check for almost $265,000 for revenues from the first five months of the agreement. The three-person board unanimously approved the lease.

An extended partnership

As the facility continued to generate substantial revenue over the years, the DNR returned to the Board of Public Works at least nine times for lease extensions.

One revision, approved in 1993, transferred the facility’s management to its current operator, Days Cove Reclamation, a firm that runs rubble landfills and reclaims former industrial and mining sites.

Other updates required the landfill to pay for improvements and amenities at Gunpowder Falls State Park, in addition to its rent.

In 1996, for example, the lease specified that the landfill fund upgrades to an environmental center in the park that Baltimore County students visited on field trips, as well as maintain the surrounding access roads.

Though the landfill was “an unusual operation for us to be in,” Nelson told the spending board at the time, “we think it’s been an ideal public partnership.”

The state also signed off on a number of provisions to gradually expand the landfill’s footprint in the park.

The current 10-year lease, ratified in 2015 and amended in 2019, says the facility now occupies 114 acres of park land — roughly five times what the Smuck brothers originally owned.

According to a copy of the agreement, Days Cove Reclamation, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment, is required to pay the state 10% of its monthly revenues as rent, as well as invest $750,000 over the course of the lease in park improvements. Among them: a new ranger residence, green technology upgrades to the educational center and new parking lot lighting.

Those payments have been received and partially expended, DNR spokesperson Gregg Bortz said.

The DNR told the board in 2015 that the lease payments had generated $12.4 million in revenue for the state since 1992. It projected an additional $500,000 to $750,000 per year over the next 10 years.

‘The fox is guarding the henhouse’

The landfill’s lease is up for renewal this year.

The DNR declined an interview request, with Bortz citing the agency’s “active negotiations with the company regarding the future of the lease.”

In an email, Bortz said lease payments from the landfill go into the DNR’s Forest and Park Reserve Fund, which supports the purchase and management of state parks, forests and other public lands.

Nawrocki questioned whether that’s a fair deal for communities that bear the environmental impact of the Days Cove landfill, as well as two other nearby trash facilities.

The lease revenue “could be going to areas that are very far from where the impact of this landfill is,” Nawrocki said. “So this community theoretically may be seeing none of the benefit.”

Meanwhile, the landfill is seeking a new wastewater permit, from the Maryland Department of the Environment that would allow it to release up to 25,000 gallons a day of treated leachate into eastern Baltimore County waterways long used for boating, fishing and crabbing.

Its current permit allows for a daily discharge of around 12,000 gallons, but the facility has been cited for exceeding its pollution limits 20 times in the last three years.

Opponents of the expanded permit argue that the state’s financial stake in the landfill raises concerns about its ability to impartially review the permit application.

“It seems to me like the fox is guarding the henhouse,” said Josh Sines, president of the Essex Middle River Civic Council, an umbrella organization representing more than 20 eastern Baltimore County communities. “I find it pretty disturbing that the state, who is the regulator of the landfill, is the one getting funds off of the landfill.”

In response, MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson wrote in an email that the state would decide on the permit “based on science, engineering and applicable laws and regulations designed to protect public health and the environment.”

A public hearing on the permit last month drew hundreds of community members outraged over potential harm to the Gunpowder ecosystem.

A local environmental watchdog, the Gunpowder Riverkeeper, has since requested a second hearing, after the state issued a new public notice clarifying the amount the landfill was seeking to discharge.

The MDE also is accepting written comments on the permit through 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Baltimore County Executive Kathy Klausmeier was among those who wrote to the agency, saying the permit “raises significant concerns” for her administration.

Baltimore County Councilman David Marks hopes the state goes further than just rejecting the permit.

The eastside Republican introduced a resolution calling on the MDE to shut down the construction waste facility. The council passed the measure Monday by a 7-0 vote.

The state’s lease agreement with the landfill “makes no sense,” Marks said in an interview.

“No amount of money from the landfill will erase the damage and pollution that this will create,” he said. “This is simply not worth it.”