Trash agency seeks to find site for landfill

Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency board members agree the next permanent executive director will be critical in finding a site for a landfill.

In a 45-minute discussion during a board meeting Tuesday, board member Lisa Mitten questioned why no action was being taken to shore up support need for the local disposal of solid waste.

“We’ve been talking about this for years,” Mitten said. “I’m wondering ... what are our next steps to moving this forward?”

Mitten, who acknowledged being “very pro-landfill,” objected to relying on guidelines in the proposed 10-year management plan to determine how to find a site.

“The solid waste management plan says we’re going to study a landfill, we’re study everything ... we’re just going to pay consultants and study and study and study,” she said.

Chairman Fred Wadnola noted that convincing a community to site a landfill required political savvy that the agency doesn’t seem to have.

“You have to sell the concept,” he said.

Wadnola added that part of the pitch would include providing a benefits package to a community. But included in his discussion were inaccurate figures.

“The town of Waterloo,

where Seneca Meadows (landfill) is located, they (annually) get $5 million,” he said, incorrectly.

Waterloo town Supervisor Don Trout during a telephone interview following the meeting said the figure is actually $650,000 per year and is not for siting the landfill but use of a clay mine that provides material for covering the site.

“Seneca Falls is the actual host of that landfill and ... the host benefit is right around $2.5 million a year,” he said. “It does fluctuate. It’s based on the amount of garbage that they take in.”

Trout recommended that any community that hosts a landfill should have its entire tax levy covered through a host agreement to compensate for the odors that cover great distances.

“I would say (odors travel) 10 to 15 miles,” he said. “It has to be the right day but you can smell it. It is a rural area that we’re in and some people think it’s manure or farming activity but a lot of people who don’t like the landfill know the difference.”

Trout noted that some of the worst times for odors are when new sections of the landfill are being created.

“Sometimes when they are building the actual cells they don’t get to cover the trash very quickly, it kind of stays open for a while,” he said. “When that’s going on, when they’re building the base of them, that’s when you get the odors.”

Wadnola had recommended creating “cells” as a way for the county to start with a small landfill that could grow over time.

“Right now, if we could do it right, we could look at a 10-acre site for a landfill,” he said. “Do it in cells and we could get 20, 30, 40, 50 acres. You don’t have to develop the whole thing in developing 10-acre cells for what we would need.”

Board members said both the choice of a new executive director and siting a landfill will be discussed during special meetings in August.