Landfill looms large over election – again

Candidates trade accusations at meeting

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — The county landfill may well decide the fate of two local politicians in the November elections, just as it did four years ago. Bob Kunis, who was voted out of office largely because of residents’ anger about the landfill, attacked the man who replaced him for having “done less than nothing about closing the landfill.” Kunis, a Republican who is now running to regain his seat on the Sullivan County Legislature, charged that his opponent, Legislator Ron Hiatt, had not done anything to “embrace a legitimate recycling program.” He ended his remarks, which were made at the county monthly meeting on August 16, with “the landfill still stinks.”

Hiatt, a Democrat, blasted back. “I wasn’t a member of the legislature that purchased land for the expansion of the landfill at $66,000 per acre,” he said. (Kunis was on the board at the time.) Hiatt also said that odor complaints had dropped from hundreds per month to three or four per month because of the policies implemented by the current board. He added that his desire to close the landfill was impeded by “simple mathematics:” the two lawmakers who represent residents who live near the facility want to shut it down; the seven other lawmakers want to expand it.

The other race in the legislature that will be heavily impacted by the issue is the one between incumbent Sam Wohl, a Democrat, and his challenger, former county planning commissioner Alan Sorensen. At the same meeting, Sorensen called for the closure of the landfill, saying it was a deterrent to economic development in the area.

Wohl said he and Hiatt have been in conversations with the New York State Department of Health about doing a survey of land around the landfill to find out if it is dangerous to the health of residents. “People say the landfill is causing cancer. If that’s true we should padlock it tomorrow,” he said.

Wohl’s anti-landfill stance, however, was not sufficiently aggressive to satisfy some important constituents. Effy Sitgmen, a resident of the Orthodox Jewish community at Mountain Lodge Estates, said the approximately 200 adults in his community would vote against Wohl in November. Sitgmen said everyone in the community of weekend and summer condominiums had shifted their voting registration locations from Brooklyn to Monticello.

Sitgmen was one of about a dozen or so speakers who, at the meeting of more than 120 residents, implored lawmakers not to expand the landfill, and to shut it down. The Mountain Lodge Estates community, located just across the street from the site intended to house the Phase Two expansion of the facility, has funded the legal battle aimed at blocking the county from receiving a permit to build the expansion. Sitgmen said the group’s strategy is to delay the expansion for as long as possible, and he predicted that could be well into the future. Depending on the amount of waste taken in, the landfill will run out of space in the next year or two.

The permitting process is currently tied up in highly technical court proceedings involving the level of noise that will be produced by machines at the expanded landfill. Additionally, appeals of rulings on other issues are ongoing. The permitting process for Phase Two began in 2004.

The group Special Protection of the Environment of the County of Sullivan (SPECS), which was initially involved in the legal battle against the expansion, dropped out because of a lack of funds. Many of their members, however, turned out to the meeting to voice opposition to the expansion.

Janet Newberg, a member of SPECS and the county’s recycling advisory board, said her group had traveled to a recycling facility operated by Rockland County, and it was a model that Sullivan should follow. She said, “If we closed the landfill and created an educational facility, where real recycling and composting occurred, the county could reap financial benefits… and become an environmental Mecca. But to continue burying resources in the ground is frankly going backwards.” There have been no operating landfills in Rockland County since the 1980s.

Several private companies have approached Sullivan County officials in the past few years with plans that involved recycling up to 90 percent of the waste generated by county residents. These proposals, however, were deemed to carry too much risk and the legislature did not pursue them.

The only person at the meeting who spoke in favor of the landfill expansion was Lumberland Supervisor John LiGreci, who is also chairman of the county supervisors’ association. LiGreci said closing the landfill would result in higher taxes because of the various costs involved, and the loss of landfill revenue.