Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency CEO Marc Rider came to Wawarsing Town Hall last Thursday to give the town board a lively presentation on the proposal for a countywide landfill that would, if it became reality, likely be located at one of two sites in Wawarsing.

The two sites are listed with three others as the only usable sites in Ulster County. That is due to the fact that much of the county is given over to state parklands and reservoirs for New York City, as well as residential areas. One site is on Brown Road, not that far from the Rondout Reservoir. Access would be constricted by narrow town roads. The other is close to the junction of Milk Road with Route 52 in Dairyland. The requirements for a landfill site are for at least 100 acres of “usable” property.

Rider explained that beginning 18 months ago, the Cornerstone surveying and mapping firm, headquartered in Troy, began to look at Ulster County for potential landfill sites. Their survey built on the work done by Hydroquest a few years earlier. One list of sites that Cornerstone looked at consisted of 45 former town landfills that are now closed and sealed. Cornerstone were primarily looking for groupings of parcels that could be purchased and provide those 100 acres, the minimum for a modern landfill.

Rider emphasized at one point that modern landfills are not like the landfills of the 1980s and earlier. The technology of liners to prevent “leachate” leaking out from a landfill site has improved and modern landfills are sectioned and segmented.

The five sites most likely to be useful were identified as the two in Wawarsing, two in Plattekill and one in Esopus, the former explosives factory at the Hercules/Dyno Nobel site. The Plattekill sites are considered either too small or surrounded by too many residences. The Esopus site has a toxic chemical contamination issue from the years of explosives manufacturing there. The Wawarsing sites, on the other hand, are more viable.

The next steps, Rider said, would be a transportation study, soil sampling and groundwater studies. Then requests for proposals would go out and contractors secured. Then the permitting process would begin with applications to the town planning board. Rider noted that the expected time required to get a landfill operating in Wawarsing would be about 10 years.

He also noted that currently Ulster County sends its waste, about 140,000 tons a year, all the way to Seneca Meadows, a giant landfill in Seneca Falls. The cost of transporting it that far runs to more than $10 million and also generates a considerable amount of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas behind climate change.

Rider reached for a dramatic image to illustrate all that. “Every day we send 15 39-ton trucks loaded with waste up to Seneca Meadows.”

Rider then pivoted to discuss how UCRRA plans to lighten the load. “We will remove all the organic stuff, the stuff that smells bad, and get that into a channel for composting.” He has said he envisages between 7,000-8,000 tons of material going that route. There will also be efforts to improve recycling.

Rider finished by noting that a large part of Ulster County, the 160,000 acres of Catskill State Park, is off-limits. Add in the areas of the reservoirs and the Shawangunk Ridge, and more than half the county is immediately off the table in terms of a 100-plus acres landfill development.

Rider and UCRRA are at the sharp end of a problem that won’t go away. We live in a culture that generates trash and we have politics that don’t cope effectively with it. Rider noted that New York State has not permitted a landfill in 30 years. Rider said that his goal was to oversee the redirection of waste and reduce the amount that will have to go into a landfill.

Others have mentioned incinerators. However, there are problems with those, too, and no new incinerator is likely to be allowed by the DEC in our state. Indeed, the smallish one that operates south of Poughkeepsie burns about 150,000 tons of Dutchess County’s garbage a year, but that leaves many thousands of tons of toxic ash behind, and that has to go to a landfill.

The Board’s Turn to Talk

In response to a question from Councilman Johnny Frost — “Why does there have to be a county landfill?” — Rider mentioned that New York’s current statewide landfill capacity runs out in 2042.

Supervisor Terry Houck wondered what benefits might accrue to Wawarsing if it hosted such a landfill. Rider went back to the nigh-on-$11 million a year that is currently spent moving the 140,000 tons of waste up to Seneca Meadows. Out of the savings on that would come money that could be offered to Wawarsing taxpayers.

Rider was asked how long a landfill like this might operate; he said 30 years was the most likely term. Houck asked why it was estimated that it would take 10 years to pass through the permitting process. Rider went into detail on this, noting that there would be many T’s to cross and I’s to dot in dealing with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Rider said it would probably take three to four years just to get it past the DEC. And then would come everything else, once the State Environmental Quality Review had been completed.

Rider then noted that the next thing for UCRRA to do is to examine property at the two Wawarsing sites and open discussions with landowners. If they will sell, then the project can move forward to the permitting process at the planning board level.

As Houck and other board members noted, if they won’t sell then the project will die.

Rider thanked the board for hearing him out and departed.

The board discussion was naturally against the idea. Houck made that point immediately. Councilman Joe Stoeckeler provided some buzz when he noted the real estate “ripple effect” that the stigma of having a large landfill in the town would cause. “The word ‘landfill’ is a ‘sizzle word’” in real estate vernacular, he said.

The board voted unanimously on a resolution opposing the plan to put a countywide landfill in Wawarsing, either at the Brown Road site or the Route 52/Milk Road site.