Officials reject request to use town sewer plant
Officials rejected a request to connect leachate collection system of the former town landfill to the town sewer lines.
TOWN OF ULSTER, N.Y. » Town officials have rejected an Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency request to connect the leachate collection system of the former town landfill to the town sewer lines.
At an agency board meeting Thursday, officials said such an arrangement would reduce the cost of hauling leachate to the city of Kingston sewage treatment plant.
“We budgeted ($153,500) for the year for Ulster and New Paltz,” agency Treasurer Tim DeGraff said. “We could cut it in half.”
The former town landfill, which is owned by the agency and now covered by solar panels, is about 500 feet from sewer lines and the amount of leachate varies annually depending on the amount of rain.
Leachate is water that percolates through bur-
ied solid waste at a landfill and which must be treated before it is allowed to flow back into the environment.
Ulster’s former landfill produced 1.12 million gallons of leachate in 2017; 1.5 million gallons in 2016; 1.29 million gallons in 2015; and 1.87 million gallons in 2014.
Agency Chairman Fred Wadnola said Ulster town waste water is treated using an anaerobic system that has microorganisms break down biodegradable material.
“The superintendent was really concerned about killing the bugs (that clean the sewage) ... down at the waste water treatment plant,” he said.
Agency Executive Director Tim Rose said the risks to the waste water treatment plant are minimal.
“The tests that we have done... (show) the quality of the leachate is really not that bad,” he said. “Just six months ago, we had to do some testing for the city of Kingston.”
Rose said the activated sludge system used by Kingston is designed to accept runoff from landfills.
“An activated sludge plant can handle an introduction of a chemical and it can withstand it pretty well,” he said.
Ulster town Supervisor James Quigley said his town rejected the proposal because the treatment system can be harmed by leachate.
“It is not an industrial strength sewer plant,” he said.
“The concern is we don’t know what chemicals were buried in the landfill,” Quigley said. “I’m not going to be the supervisor that agrees to accept that waste and then wakes up one morning to find out all the bugs in the sewer plant are dead because some chemical got discharged out of the landfill.”