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Kathleen Schrodel will never forget the day about 18 years ago when Frederick County trucks plowed through her family's Reich's Ford Road farm, destroying crops to make room for an expanded landfill.

Though Kathleen and her husband, William, left Frederick County with a check for $2.2 million signed by the county, their struggle and very public fight to keep the farm that had been in the family since the Great Depression, is never far from her mind.

"It was very difficult," Kathleen Schrodel said an interview from her home in Massey on Maryland's Eastern Shore this week. "I really don't like to remember, but you can't forget. When they started digging with the heavy equipment through the fields that we worked so hard on, Bill said ‘I can't stand to watch this.'"

In 1992, the Schrodels moved to Massey in Kent County and continued doing what they love most – farming. Today, they farm 260 acres of corn and soy beans.

But the battle they endured from 1987 to 1990 continues to be a dark spot in Frederick County's long history of trash disposal management.

With the Frederick Board of County Commissioners' June 23 decision to move forward with building a trash incinerator, or what some call "a waste-to-energy facility," the Schrodel's battle with the county is back in the news.

Commissioner John "Lennie" Thompson Jr. (R) continues to predict that voters will flock to polls to take commissioners who supported the incinerator out of office. Thompson bases this prediction on the public outcry when the county condemned and claimed the Schrodel farm to expand the adjacent landfill.

Two of the commissioners at the time – Sterling E. Bollinger (D) and Charles E. Smith (D) – voted in favor of the condemnation for a landfill and lost their bids for re-election. One commissioner – Richard L. Grossnickle (R) – also supported the move, but did not run for re-election.

"I believe the careers in public service of all three came to an end because of both factors, namely condemning a working farm and using the condemned land for a new landfill," said Thompson, in an e-mail Monday.

Thompson believes that because he supports the incinerator, his political career will be over when his term ends in 2010.

"I've been saying this from the beginning," he said, shortly before the June 23 incinerator vote. "I understand that and accept it."

Bollinger and Smith also believe that taking the Schrodel farm and expanding the landfill is a large part of the reason they lost bids for re-election.

"It helped," Bollinger said, in an interview this week. "I don't think that it was the only thing. It was a combination of things. But I don't doubt it helped to finish my [political] career."

Bollinger served as a Frederick County commissioner from 1974 to 1978 and again from 1982 to 1990. Smith served from 1978 to 1990.

Smith said in an interview this week that his landfill vote may have contributed to his loss, but "when you've been in office three terms, it's hard to get re-elected anyhow."

Looking back, Smith still feels he made the correct decision. "I still feel that was the place to put [the landfill]."

Grossnickle could not be reached for comment.

The commissioners' fight with the Schrodels started in November 1987, when the county wrote the couple a letter expressing interest in their property and the need to expand the adjacent landfill, which had opened in 1967.

Negotiations with the Schrodels began the following year, but fell through. In February 1989, the county warned the Schrodels about condemnation and in September the condemnation was legally filed in court.

By that time, residents in support of the Schrodels signed petitions and formed groups such as "Members of Frederick Residents for Environmental Defense" and the "Committee to Save the Schrodel Farm."

The county offered the Schrodels $1.8 million for the land, but in 1990, the couple declined the offer then sued the county. In October, a $2.2 million settlement was eventually reached.

Bollinger and Smith both say they have been watching the county's current controversy regarding the incinerator with much interest. And both favor building an incinerator here.

In fact, in the 1980s, Frederick, Carroll, Howard and Washington counties considered building a joint incinerator in Carroll County, Bollinger said. But the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority, an independent state agency that has been helping Frederick County with its current incinerator project, said at the time there was not enough trash to warrant such a facility.

"I just sit back knowing the history and just laugh," Bollinger said. "It's going to take a toll on [commissioners], but I really don't think it will ruin their careers. But it could be one of the elements."

E-mail Sherry Greenfield at sgreenfield@gazette.net.