No more landfill?

An alternative is recommended

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — The transfer stations would remain open, and waste would still be delivered to the site of the landfill in Monticello, but if the recommendations of the Sullivan County Solid Waste Task Force are implemented, just about everything else might change.

The task force issued a report on March 11, with a number of surprising recommendations. One of the most surprising is that after the county has spent six years and millions of dollars trying to acquire the necessary permits to open the phase two expansion of the landfill, the report recommends that the county drop that effort altogether.

In an interview in his office, county manager David Fanslau explained that the bottom line was simple economics. In order to pay for all the costs associated with phase two, including debt service and the cost of closing the facility at the end of its life, the county would have to increase the tipping fee from $75 per ton to $240 per ton, which is just not feasible.

Fanslau said that even in the ’90s and the early 2000s, when the facility was bringing in cash by importing waste from outside the county, the landfill was not profitable. Outside municipalities were dumping waste for $40 per ton, when the actual cost of processing the waste was about $60 per ton. Fanslau said, “The bottom line is that the landfill runs out of space in June 2010, and we’ll still have $40 million in debt.”

The outlook for phase two isn’t looking much brighter. Phase two would not be large enough to compete with the large operations in Pennsylvania and upstate New York that handle many times as much garbage as the county’s facility could accept and, therefore, even if importation were politically possible?and that would stir a major controversy?the facility could not compete with the bigger operations. Therefore, phase two could not pay for itself without charging extremely high prices to residents to dispose of their garbage.

The alternative put forward by the task force involves several steps. The first would be to expand the existing recycling operation and beef up enforcement. This would likely include implementing clear plastic bags to help employees enforce the recycling rules. The recycling facility would remain at the landfill site.

Another step would be to follow the lead of Delaware County and to remove organic material, such as food and grass clippings, from the waste stream and compost it. By aggressively composting and recycling, about 66 percent of the material from the waste stream could be removed, leaving only about 34 percent to be placed into a landfill. This is the result that has been achieved in Delaware County.

The report envisions that the remaining 34 percent of waste that needed to be placed in a landfill be exported to another facility outside of the county.

Another major part of the report’s recommendation is that the county should do away with the current tipping fee structure and instead create a disposal district, which would essentially include the entire county. Every building in the county, whether a single home, an office a gas station or a building owned by a tax-exempt organization, would be charged a fee to be able to use the landfill.

Under the plan put forward, the fee for a single-family house would be about $15 per month.

Will the legislature accept the recommendations? It seems possible. When the report was presented to the legislators at a meeting on March 17, the reponse indicated that most county lawmakers agree that the phase two expansion is not a good way to proceed.

Even John LiGreci, the supervisor of Lumberland, who had been an ardent supporter of the phase two expansion, said the report showed that there was light at the end of the tunnel, and that the county should explore its recommendations.

There were some questions about whether some residents would be worse off under a fee system, and it was suggested that the county explore the Rockland County model in which part of the fee is returned to residents who turn in less than the alloted amount of solid waste.

Sullivan lawmakers are expected to decide whether to move forward with the report recommendations by April 16.