Cattaraugus County and the City of Olean are represented by Michael Gerrard of Arnold & Porter in New York City, as opponents to the DEC permit application that may be submitted next year by
Bill Heitzenrater's company Southern Tier Waste (successor to IWS). In early April Heitzenrater told the Associated Press he had a "preliminary permit" for a new dump in Farmersville. (See the edited version in the New York Daily News.) But that's hardly the case. In 1996 the DEC awarded Heiztenrater's predecessor, Integrated Waste Systems (IWS), "conceptual" approval for a bare-bones proposal for a dump in Farmersville. This gave the company permission to submit a Part 360 application to construct a landfill, no more. The new proposal includes destruction of wetlands and importation of New York City and Long Island garbage, as well as relocation of the landfill footprint within 100 feet of the county road on a 30 percent slope. All these provisions of the new proposal were missing from the old one under which IWS received conceptual approval. After all public comments submitted by April 14, 1999, are considered by the DEC, the full scope of Heitzenrater's proposal might be more than he's prepared to achieve. At any rate, we're months away from a landfill permit. If Heitzenrater's past performance is any indication, it's unlikely he's taking the prospect of actually building and operating a landfill himself very seriously: he's never done it before, and the hydrogeology outfit he headed up for IWS, dissolved last year, he named Aquatic Fantaseas, Inc.!
