***The Chaffee Landfill's effort to pass muster under the landfill gas rule comes on the heels of the Environmental Board's meeting August 20 in Albany to consider putting the rule in its own Part 208. If Chaffee's application is any indication, this administrative change will have no effect on compliance. (See ENB, 8/8/01).
WASTE BY RAIL TO LOCATION NEAR YOU?
***The Chaffee Landfill is part of an "intermodal transport" scheme
using rail to transport garbage to landfills. Waste Management has put
together a network of over a hundred landfills linked (or potentially
linked) by rail, including Chaffee, High Acres and Chemical Waste
Management (Model City, Niagara Co.):
***Waste Management of New York is also making certain upgrades to its construction and demolition processing facility Truxton Street in the Bronx:
***Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island has applied for approval for a fully enclosed 2,880 ton-per-day transfer station, to transfer garbage from truck to rail. A new rail spur will connect the facility to the end of the existing Travis branch of the Staten Island Railroad. Comments must be submitted in writing no later than October 12, 2001. For more go to:
***Staten Island won't get a break from the closing of the world's largest landfill: Interstate Materials Corp.'s 15-acre transfer station station there goes over from clean fill processing to C&D, putrescible waste and dredged sludge material processing. (ENB, 7/11/01).FARMERSVILLE: STILL THE LARGEST DUMP
PROPOSAL IN NEW YORK
***IWS of Buffalo submitted a revised permit
application to DEC to construct a
regional landfill in the Town of Farmersville last month, but
DEC requested (and got) a waiver from the usual 30-day period within
which action on the application must be taken. The clock now ticks
while the Town Board remains hostage to a lawsuit threat, made last
year when they tried to strengthen the local landfill law and then
rescinded most of the changes. The County Legislature, long opposed to
dump proposal, is powerless to stop it so long as the town refuses to
step aside. CCCC wants the Town to rescind its landfill law.
THE GARBAGE INDUSTRY HAS YET TO CLEAN UP
ITS ACT
***Proposed Guidance for Transfer of Permits and
Pending Applications has been made available by DEC. The guidance
includes the statement that such transfers must consider whether the
transferee is "fit," but the actual guidance provides no specifics.
Will the DEC's 1993 Environmental Guidance Memorandum apply to permit
transfers? The new proposed guidance is silent on this question.
Comments must be submitted in writing no later than Sept. 21,
2001. For more go to:
***Metro Enviro Transfer, LLC, a transfer station in Croton, NY, recently purchased by major player Allied Waste Industries, has been indicted by the U.S. Attorney's office for a fraud scheme to overbill customers all over the state. The scheme allegedly involved Seneca Meadows Landfill and former officials of Waste Management of New York, as well as former Metro Enviro owner James Hickey, identified by federal agents as an associate of the Genovese crime family, according to the FBI Complaint filed earlier this summer with Magistrate Judge George A. Yanthis. See Rob. Worth, "Where the Mob Ruled, Big Business Steps In," NYTimes (8/12/01).
***Larry Lackey, V.P. for Permits, Compliance and Engineering at Casella Waste Systems, was found to be falsifying documents this summer by New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services, which made him ineligible to certify the company's various waste disposal facilities in that state. Courier (Biddeford/Saco, Maine, 7/19/01).
***In July, Waste Management's transfer station in the Bronx was busted for illegally dumping medical waste at the Shade Landfill in Central City, Somerset County, PA. The action was one of PA's periodic "Operation Clean Sweep" inspections of garbage haulers. Waste Management had the most violations of twelve companies, with 339 environmental and 554 safety violations, state officials said. Waste News (7/18/01).
***Waste Management subsidiary Chemical Waste Management is under investigation by the EPA for burying materials thought to contain PCBs in its landfill in the Town of Porter," according to the Buffalo News (7/31/01).
***The principals of Consolidated Recycling, Inc., were indicated by the U.S. Attorney last month for abandoning hazardous materials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire they got from, among other places, the U.S. Army at Fort Drum, NY. "The waste included mercury powder and ballasts contaminated with cancer-causing PCBs," according to Foster's Daily Democrat (NH, 8/16/01).
IN OTHER NEWS
*** "But long-time residents say that's not what they bargained for."
Revenue from the Yaphank Landfill in Brookhaven on Long Island's South
Shore allows local homeowners to pay the lowest per capita property
taxes on the Island. But those same homeowners for ten years have
lost the use of their water wells, which are contaminated by the
landfill, according to NY Newsday (8/10/01).
***The federal Court of Appeals ruled last month that flow control ordinances in Oneida and Herkimer counties do not violate the U.S. Constitution because "a municipal flow control law does not discriminate against out-of-state interests in violation of the Commerce Clause when it directs all waste to publicly owned facilities." The counties had the benefit of a solid waste public management authority, which owned waste facilities to which the local laws directed all in-county waste. The court also strongly suggested that incidental discrimination against out-of-area haulers is outweighed where "a municipality is acting within its traditional purview," to protect "compelling" local safety interests. United Haulers Assn., Inc. (2nd Cir., July 27, 2001).
--Gary Abraham, Vice President
Concerned Citizens of Cattaraugus County, Inc.
http://concernedcitizens.homestead.com