A celebration of Kaffenbarger’s life will be held Saturday at North Hampton Community Church, with visitation from 10 a.m. to noon and a funeral service at noon.
Kaffenbarger shared 62 years of marriage with Carl Wayne Kaffenbarger, and the two had four children, 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Her son, Mark Kaffenbarger, said his mother always had a positive outlook on everything and was fearless.
“Even if it was outside of her normal purview, she was willing to go ahead and at least attempt to try without fear of failure, and that’s what allowed her the ability to do what she did, not only with CF Water, but all aspects of her life as well,” Mark Kaffenbarger said.
Kaffenbarger was a giving and gracious person, and she was a “lifelong advocate of proper landfill management,” Mark said. He said the family was proud of her efforts.
“Her entire adult life was focused on making sure the environment was taken care of, that the people in the community, not only within the general area of the landfill itself, but also the downstream impacts that occur through any type of leakage or anything like that,” Mark said.
The 8.5-acre Tremont City Barrel Fill site, 3108 Snyder Domer Road in German Twp., is a closed industrial waste landfill. An estimated 51,500 drums and 300,000 gallons of industrial liquid waste were disposed of at the site from 1976 to 1979, threatening the aquifer.
The site contains an estimated 1.5 million gallons of hazardous waste buried in the ground.
Residents have fought for decades to clean up the site, and the U.S. EPA is working on a plan to build new, double-lined cell that is the most protective the EPA can offer and reburying some of the waste while monitoring it forever and shipping some waste off site for proper disposal. Shovels are expected to go in the ground in 2026.
Contaminants include elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, such as xylenes, ethylbenzene, toluene and methylene chloride. Metals such as chromium and arsenic were also detected in the liquid and solid waste.
Larry Ricketts, a founder of People for Safe Water, became aware of the issue at the Tremont City Barrel Fill in 1984 in his role as Clark County disaster services coordinator when Laura approached him.
“She has always been a great inspiration to many of us,” Ricketts said. “I will miss seeing her and am sad that she did not live longer to see the end result of her efforts regarding the barrel fill project. Our deepest condolences go out to her family.”
Marilyn Welker, one of the founders of People for Safe Water, described Laura as “a woman who just persisted.”
“She was a mother and a wife and a neighbor and a community-spirited person who knew that the community was being poisoned, and the public officials who should have been responsible for advocating on behalf of their wellbeing were just not doing their jobs,” Welker said. “And she was not going to sit by on her hands, and she just started organizing people to share information to try to hold public officials' feet to the fire.”
Kaffenbarger left “no stone unturned,” dutifully documenting strange medical cases that she believed were due to water contamination, Welker said. She said Kaffenbarger was “very much a Christian lady who lived her values.”
“She was the last one standing of the generation of people that really fought for it and she still, I think, was a touchstone for people,” Welker said. “It just was so important to her, and any way that she could be a resource for us, she was more than willing to do.”
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Charlie Patterson, Clark County commissioner and former health commissioner, said he met Kaffenbarger in late 2000 or early 2001, early into his term as health commissioner. The barrel fill was brought to his attention right away, he said.
“It was something she was very passionate about and she probably knew more about it than most anyone else because she lived in German Twp. and she saw what was going on,” Patterson said. “Then she interviewed and talked with many, many people who actually had hands-on contact with putting the barrels in and oversight of that.”
Patterson lauded Laura as an example of a good community member.
“It’s obvious that we need citizens like Laura to take these kinds of concerns seriously. (She spent) many, many hours of her life devoted to this cause,” Patterson said. “And when that happens we will see the positive results that we’re going to see in this community for another 100 years of having safe water, because this is properly contained and taken care of.”
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