Secrets of ‘Gambino Dump’ to be revealed

County and town take action on brownfield site

By FRITZ MAYER

FALLSBURG, NY — After a decade of inaction and false starts, officials from Fallsburg and Sullivan County are taking action to find out what kind of waste is in the so-called “Gambino Dump” from the late ‘80s. The property is located on Route 42. The owners abandoned the 26-acre parcel long ago, and an unidentified liquid is seeping into the Neversink River.

Fallsburg has received a $200,000 grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to explore the dump.

The process of getting to this point has been complex.

The facility—called the “Gambino Dump” because a man named Dominic Gambino once owned the property—was operational for about a year in the late ‘80s. According to Robert Theodore, Sullivan County Real Property Administration Director, the dump was the object of several environmental investigations and enforcement actions in its brief life, and was ultimately closed by the DEC.

The owner, listed in county records as Parvis Industries, stopped paying taxes by 1990. Normally in a case like this, the county would have foreclosed long ago. But a foreclosure might have opened the county to liability, and the county may have been forced to pay for the dump clean up. To avoid liability, the parcel was simply removed from the tax rolls.

Recent legislation passed by lawmakers in Albany provides for municipalities to obtain a “temporary incidence of ownership.” This allows officials to get onto the property for the purpose of exploration, without taking title to the property or incurring any liability.

The process involves the Town of Fallsburg, where the land is situated. It also involves the county because, according to county treasurer Ira Cohen, the county treasurer is responsible for trying to collect the delinquent taxes on the property.

The $200,000 DEC grant will pay for the exploration of the property and the determination of just what was dumped at the site. Officials speculate that the material in the dump is mostly construction and demolition debris.

A second dump enters the picture

If the garbage in the Gambino Dump is not too toxic, the Town of Fallsburg will clear out the debris and use it as cover at its landfill located about a half mile away. That landfill was closed in 1982 but, according to Fallsburg supervisor Steve Levine, “it wasn’t closed to DEC standards.” Now the town must take remedial steps on the site. If the town is able to move the debris from one site to the other, the DEC will pay 90 percent of the cost. And if everything goes as planned, at the end of the process Fallsburg will have only one closed landfill, while the 26-acre parcel of riverfront land, complete with a two-acre pond, will be restored.

The precise details of the ownership of the parcel remain to be worked out. At a recent county meeting where lawmakers voted to move forward with the process, legislator Rodney Gaebel said, “We can determine at a later date what the agreement between the town and the county would be of ownership of the property.”

According to Theodore, back taxes on the property amount to more than $110,000, and officials from both the town and county would likely want to get the land back on the tax roles at the end of the process.