Dunn landfill is perpetuating an environmental injustice
Rensselaer, a city of more than 9,000 people in about 3.5 square miles, has been designated as both an “environmental justice zone” — due to income levels substantially below the federal poverty rate — and as a “disadvantaged community” under New York’s Climate Act, which seeks to afford them reduced pollution, cleaner air and economic opportunities, as well as greener sources of energy. Environmental justice is supposed to give low-income and minority communities fair and meaningful treatment with respect to implementation and enforcement of environmental laws and policies.
The state has an opportunity to live up to those promises: The Department of Environmental Conservation is weighing the renewal of the operating permit for Dunn construction and demolition landfill’s in Rensselaer. That permit should not be renewed.
The landfill opened in 2015 only a couple of hundred yards from the Rensselaer City Schools, where over 1,000 students attend from pre-k to 12th grade, as well as a threecounty BOCES program. Half of the school population is minority; 67% are economically disadvantaged.
It’s sobering to compare health statistics from Rensselaer’s
disadvantaged communities zone to those from more than 4,900 other census tracts in the state: COPD emergency department visits are 92% higher. Asthma emergency visits are 63% higher. Lowbirthweight babies, 67%. Heart attack hospitalization is 57% more frequent. Premature death is 59% more common.
How can people whose health is already vulnerable be made to bear the burden of living, working and going to school next to a landfill? The issue should not be whether pollution measurements exceed state standards, but what long-term exposure does to their health.
It’s not just the landfill itself that affects its neighbors: Up to 100 long-haul diesel trucks a day go back and forth to and from the landfill through Rensselaer’s residential and business districts, starting at 6:30 a.m.
What’s more, landfill leachate with toxic PFAS chemicals, which is trucked away from the facility, has been found in nearby waterways. These chemicals are going in the Hudson River, extending the impact of the landfill well beyond the local area.
Finally, this landfill hurts Rensselaer in another way, too: in its property values. No business is going to want to develop in a city that has this environmental and health nightmare in the middle of it.
The state constitution gives people the right to clean air and water and to live in a healthful environment. The people of Rensselaer are not being granted that right. For our city’s physical and economic health, the DEC must reject Dunn’s renewal permit.