1. The Brookhaven Town Landfill and Waste Management Issues

Boaters on the Great South Bay, observers from Fire Island dunes, drivers on the Sunrise Highway – all have come to recognize the Brookhaven Town Landfill as a major new feature of the Long Island landscape – often dominating the horizon and certainly dominating the list of local environmental concerns within our study area.

More than a decade ago, it was recognized that leachate from the landfill has been advancing in a plume through the groundwater south toward the Bay, contaminating wells and threatening the waters of the Beaver Dam Creek and, ultimately, the Bay itself. As a direct result of this contamination of the groundwater, Brookhaven Town began the subsidized installation of public water along residential streets in the affected area. This installation has been completed in Brookhaven Hamlet; it has not yet been undertaken in South Haven which is equally affected.

Odors from the landfill have been a major problem in our study area, at one point prompting then Governor Cuomo to dispatch Richard Kessel to investigate the matter and expedite the Town’s e6orts to mitigate the problem. More important, serious concerns about elevated rates of respiratory ailments at the nearby Frank P. Long School and the Horizon Village residential development have raised the issue of a direct impact on the health of local citizens due to emissions from the landfill.

For the past two years, the Town has been moving ahead with plans to expand the landfill, nearly doubling its present size, through the construction of Cell 5. This new cell will serve primarily as a repository of incinerator ash, to meet the requirements of the Intermunicipal Agreement between Brookhaven and Hempstead Towns (the “ash-for-trash” dea1). Citizens of Brookhaven and South Haven Hamlets have actively opposed this deal, primarily for two reasons: 1.) The expansion of the landfill and its continued use to stockpile ash, with its known high content of toxic components, further threatens the health and environment of our community; and, 2.) this use of the landfill, as a highly effective revenue engine fueled by garbage, skews the economics of waste management in Brookhaven Town in such a way as to discourage efforts at recycling and reducing the overall waste stream.

We believe that the solid waste management plan (SWMP) adopted by the Town (and accepted by the State DEC) is deficient, and that communities such as ours can play a valuable role in helping to improve it. As an example, in 1992, the BVA Board proposed that the Hamlet become the site of a pilot program for a pay-by-weight, or “pay as you throw” approach to garbage collection, whereby residents would pay a specified amount for each pickup of non-recyclable waste, based on weight or container size. Pickup of recyclables would be free. In other communities, this scheme had proven successful in reducing the amount of residential garbage in the waste stream, while producing significant savings in garbage fees for participating households. A questionnaire distributed in the community by the BVA in 1993 got a significant (over 70 responses mailed back) and overwhelmingly positive response. We met with Supervisor LaMura, then-Commissioner of Waste Management James Heil, and Councilman Felix Grucci to discuss the possibility of implementing such a pilot program. To our great disappointment, the Town was not willing to follow through. Worse, under the current contract with its carters, the Town has actually reduced the rate of recycling pickups.

We list here some of the measures not included in the Town’s SWMP, that have been repeatedly proposed by taxpayers and citizens groups, and that have been successfully implemented in other nearby towns, and should be called for under New York State’s mandated hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle as a guiding principal of municipal waste management:

a. A Don’t Bag It Program. “Don’t Bag It”, or “Just Mow It” programs eliminate trash because grass clippings are not collected. Rather, they require homeowners to leave the grass clippings on their lawns or, if they are collected, to compost them at home. In neighboring Islip Town, four million dollars are saved each year by this program; in Smithtown their program saves about $600,000. Brookhaven Town has recently adopted such a program, on a voluntary basis. The Town has announced plans to make the program mandatory within a year. We applaud this effort, and strongly urge the Town government to continue to support this program.

b. Home Composting. Home composting is an acceptable way to get rid of kitchen sink wastes, leaves, weeds and grass clippings. Monies are available in State grants to institute composting programs but the Town has not organized them.

c. Pay-by-Weight Program. Pay-by-weight programs clearly reduce the amount of trash put out for public collection. Southold, Shelter Island and Southampton Towns all have adopted pay-by-weight programs. Estimates by the Southampton Town Supervisor suggest that pay-by-weight programs can reduce the amount of garbage by about 40%. The Hamlet of Brookhaven has repeatedly asked the Town to use its community to plan a pilot program of this type, but the Town has refused.

d. Commercial Source Separation Program. The Town has failed to initiate a Town-wide commercial recycling program similar to the red can, curbside source separation program set up in residential areas. Curiously, such a program would not only increase recycling and be consistent with the State priorities, but it would also implement a January 1, 1989, Town law (Chapter 46, Sec. 1-20), which requires that all commercial, industrial, and institutional establishments source separate their waste.

e. Encourage More Recycling. Currently, the Town of Brookhaven is in the process of entering into an agreement with ah outside contractor (Star Recycling, of Brooklyn, N.Y.) to construct and operate a mixed-waste recycling facility at the Town landfill site. Rather than abdicate its recycling responsibility in favor of a commercial facility that profits from increased waste, the Town should adopt an aggressive recycling program that involves its citizens in the kind of activities listed above: A program that makes more effective use of Brookhaven’s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) through source-separation by households, businesses, and institutions; a program in which an involved citizenry is properly informed about the costs of waste management – informed that costs of the MRF, where the source-separated recyclables go, are about $58/ton, while the cost of incineration at Hempstead amounts to about $120/ton, and a Don’t-Bag-It program costs less than $10/ton. A waste-management program that truly encourages recycling at the source would save the Town money, reduce the amount of waste, and thereby reduce the need for energy-intensive mixed-waste recycling facilities that mine our garbage, at great cost, for stuff that shouldn’t have been put there in the first place.

With regard to the expansion of the landfill, this past March, a New York State Administrative Law Judge, Kevin J. Casutto, presided over a sequence of hearings regarding the Town’s application to build and operate Cell 5. Arguments against the granting of a permit were made by attorneys representing the residents of Horizon Village, by the Environmental Defense Fund and Sierra Club, and by a coalition of local civic groups (including the BVA), with Parent- Teacher Associations and school officials from the South Country and Longwood school districts. Attorneys for Brookhaven Town and the New York State DEC argued in favor of the expansion.

In the end, Judge Casutto ruled that there were no substantive issues that warranted further judicial process. However, in his ruling, Casutto noted that the potential for fugitive ash dust escaping from the landfill does raise “very legitimate public health concerns.” The ruling notes that the Town’s testing and monitoring of the environmental impact of the existing Cell 4 has been inadequate, and, “Ingestion of dust particulates must be addressed because of the proximity of the Horizon neighborhood and the likelihood of ingestion of dust and dirt particulates by residents, including children, in neighborhoods nearby.” The ruling adds a new condition to the permit to operate Cell 5. The Town is directed to begin air monitoring immediately, and the DEC staff is required to evaluate the monitoring plan and its results, and determine, after one year, whether the permit needs further modification or, possibly, should be revoked.