Trash agency considers forming regional authority

The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency board expects to get information next week on the cost of a study that would examine a proposal to turn oversight of the county’s solid waste disposal to a joint authority with Sullivan and Greene counties.

The proposed alliance was discussed at a board meeting Wednesday. Executive Director Tim Rose said Middletown-based Cornerstone Environmental Group is expected to discuss parameters and costs of the study.

“This is a proposal to form a regional authority to handle solid waste,” agency Chairman Fred Wadnola said. He said the proposed plan would lead to the demise of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency.

“It would disappear (or) become part of the new authority for Ulster County,” he said.

“I think regionalization is the way to go,” Wadnola said. “We need to look at that today in order to solve the problems in solid waste.”

Officials expect the study would be paid by Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, which would be reimbursed by Sullivan and Greene counties. The agency would turn the study over to county legislators, who would ultimately decide whether to approve the regional authority.

Wadnola said lawmakers from the counties visited a landfill that is jointly owned by Oneida and Herkimer counties to determine what needs to be done if a regional authority is formed.

“We had the three chairmen from each one of the legislatures go on a tour so they could go back to their people with a good oversight

of the operation up there,” he said.

The review would be done separately from a report being put together by the county Solid Waste Management Improvement Commission, which has yet to finalize its studies after nearly three years of discussions and site visits. The 12-member commission was established by the county Legislature in 2014 to find alternatives to current solid waste disposal operations overseen by the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency.

The 96-page report compiles notes from commission

members, with sections on use of landfills, composting, wasteto-energy facilities, and recycling.

The Resource Recovery Agency was established in 1991 under a county management plan that called for the “design, permit and construction of a single, new capacity landfill as the primary means of disposing of wastes which cannot be reduced, reused, recycled, or composted.” However, a draft proposal in 1993 that named potential sites was dropped after protests from potential host communities.