Sullivan facing extra landfill costs

By DAVID HULSE

MONTICELLO, NY — Sullivan County officials say they are facing up to $600,000 in unexpected costs related to construction of the landfill’s latest cell expansion because New York State has not made good on its assurances of permitting for the construction.

Harvey Smith, Sullivan County Commissioner of General Services, says the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has dragged its feet in finalizing the new construction and the contractor the county hired to do the work is now billing Sullivan for idle equipment waiting to begin work the landfill.

No spokesperson for DEC was available at press time.

Smith says Sullivan filed its applications for the work on cell number six, the final cell in the original construction in September 2002. While the state nominally is required to respond to the application in 20 days, Smith says Sullivan has never received any formal acknowledgment from DEC. “But that’s not unusual,” Smith said, noting that the state’s routine in past has been to prepare construction-related comments on the application, withholding formal acknowledgments until a permit is actually issued.

In the meantime, by past practice, Sullivan has gone ahead with work based on verbal approvals from the agency. Using the same practice this time, the county let bids for the construction last April and an Old Bridge, NJ contractor, Servidone was the low bidder on the project at $4.524 million. The work was supposed to be finished by end of December of this year, but it has yet to begin.

Smith is suspicious that the DEC is avoiding local political criticism with the delay. “We started seeing some unusual delays about the same time that protests about the landfill grew last spring.”

Delays involved wetlands delineation. “We always have to flag the wetland areas. This time we had to go back and flag them again.”

Then there were air pollution issues. The county was required to assess Title Five federal air pollution issues, which county engineers tell Smith is usually an assessment made post construction, rather than before.

It’s just been one little thing after another. “It’s never been an issue of getting the permit or not, only the time frame,” Smith said.

Smith says the county has agreed to pay $220,000 of the $600,000 set-up charge, which has been billed by Servidone. How much greater that amount gets will depend largely on the weather after the work finally begins, Smith said.