HASN'T A PERMIT ALREADY BEEN GRANTED?
No. "Conceptual approval" was given by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in May 1996 on condition that a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) be completed. A draft SEIS is now available for public review.
The 1996 DEC decision was limited to whether "conceptually" it is possible to put a landfill in Farmersville. IWS elected to have a hearing on a handful of issues involving the nature of the proposed landfill site (not the nature of a landfill that might be built there), such as whether the high groundwater table would prohibit construction of any landfill there. The DEC ultimately ruled that, with enough money, IWS could engineer a landfill that could keep groundwater from forcing it's way into a landfill.
However, the 1996 conceptual approval left questions about how exactly how to design and construct a landfill for a second stage of review. These questions will begin to be addressed in 2004, when the DEC holds one or more hearings on IWS's permit application.
The Farmersville dump proposal . . .
