The editorial board has issued warnings about the landfill over decades.

Opinion

SGVPLANDFILL

The Editorial Board

This crisis for Long Island comes with a due date: December 2024. 
That’s when the Brookhaven Town landfill is slated to close. The mammoth dumping ground used by much of the region for nearly a half-century is expected to run out of space then, which will precipitate a major problem. 
What to do with our trash? 
Disposing of garbage is expensive, and various methods have different consequences for our health, environment and infrastructure. And even though post-landfill proposals are emerging and being vetted, the lengthy process of acquiring permits from several layers of government and then building on Long Island means we’re getting closer to having to call these last-minute solutions. 
Fortunately, there’s still time for the analysis and deliberation needed to make decisions which will work for all of Long Island, because getting rid of our garbage is a truly regional problem. Unfortunately, as with many other issues, Long Island has no mechanism to effect a regional solution. In other parts of New York, counties handle solid waste disposal. But here, responsibility lies with 13 towns and two cities, and each makes its own deals. 
The Long Island Association business group and the Long Island Regional Planning Council intend to spearhead a discussion of the looming crisis beginning early next year. That’s good. There’s a lot to talk about, though neither organization can require or mandate anything, even if it wanted to. Most of the new proposals are sited in Brookhaven Town, which will bear a large burden in the approval process. But the best bet for comprehensive guidance is the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which must issue permits for any new facility. The DEC should approach its task with a best-for-the-region orientation. 
The numbers define the stakes. Brookhaven’s landfill takes in 387,000 tons per year of construction and demolition debris (called C &amp; D) and 351,000 tons of ash, the product of burning household trash in three of the four waste-to-energy plants on Long Island run by Covanta. The rest of Long Island has one private landfill in Melville for C &amp; D and one other ash fill, in Babylon, which takes only that town’s ash and also will close within a decade. 
New proposals include: 
A plan from the Winters Bros. solid-waste management company for a waste transfer station adjacent to the Brookhaven landfill in Yaphank that would take in C &amp; D, load it on train cars, and ship it off Long Island via a spur line to the Long Island Rail Road’s Main Line. 
A waste transfer station pitched by Gershow Recycling, to collect C &amp; D at its Medford facility and ship it out, also by train and also on the Main Line. 
A third waste transfer station sited in Brentwood proposed by Omni Recycling, to take C &amp; D and municipal solid waste off Long Island by rail, again on the Main Line. 
A new landfill for ash only at the site of the Brookhaven landfill, to be run by Brookhaven Town. 
These proposals will be viewed as competing. They shouldn’t be. They are potential components of an overall solution. But there are many questions to be answered before deciding on the best mix. 
Start with some baseline principles to inform the process: 
We need to take trucks off our roads and with them the congestion, pollution and wear-and-tear they create, not increase their numbers by carting more of our garbage off the Island. Rail must be part of the solution. 
We need to boost our abysmal recycling rates — the less waste to process, the better. Long Islanders produce on average 4.5 pounds per day of municipal solid waste. Already, the region produces more cardboard waste than ever, from shipping boxes of online shopping. Another big target: glass, which currently ends up mostly in landfills, incinerated or otherwise. Expanding the state bottle bill to add deposits on wine, liquor and other types of glass bottles would help. So would developing new markets; crushed or powdered glass can be made into sand or substituted for Portland cement. The garbage stream could be reduced further by an anaerobic digester in Yaphank to turn biodegradable organic waste like food and grass clippings into energy and compost; it awaits one final agreement with Suffolk County. 
We need to weigh carefully the environmental burden placed on neighboring communities by new facilities. 
Then ask questions: 
With an increased reliance on rail and multiple providers of that, what is the region’s track and rail car capacity? What would happen during service interruptions or ebbs and flows in garbage collection? What sort of storage facilities are required in those events? How much redundancy of service is required? 
Are additional industrial uses or these new facilities being planned, and are they desirable? 
How much capacity should a new ashfill have? Will that calculation change if Covanta succeeds in adding to its roster of customers — for example, by signing contracts with North Hempstead and Oyster Bay towns, which truck their garbage off Long Island? 
The state has invested in studying a deep water port for Long Island. Is there any role for shipping out garbage by water? 
Long Island’s garbage is a complex problem urgently needing a solution. We have no time to waste.

VPBROOKHAVEN201206NEW

LI, do not waste this crisis

AIAudio - LI, do not waste this crisis


Copy Of VPLANDFILL-2020

Ten years. 
That's the latest estimate from Brookhaven officials for when the town's massive landfill could reach capacity and close. Sounds like a long way off? It isn't. 
For Long Island's leaders, who need to deal with the solid-waste problem that's coming, 10 years is tomorrow. 
The landfill accepts huge amounts of construction debris and ash generated by the burning of trash from Islip, Huntington, Smithtown, Hempstead and Brookhaven towns at waste-to-energy facilities. Its closure will have a major impact. Islip Town's landfill, which is for construction debris, is slated to close next year. Babylon's facility could have a longer life than Brookhaven's but takes in only its own ash. And there is a private landfill in Melville for construction debris. 
State legislation enacted in 1983 bars Long Island from opening any new landfills for garbage for environmental reasons. In other words, we've known this problem was coming for 32 years. It's time to get serious. 
Two questions loom. How will we get all that waste off Long Island? And, can we reduce the amount we create? 
Already, as many as 5,000 tons of garbage is trucked off Long Island every day. It's expensive, batters our roads and pollutes our air. And enticing trucks to Long Island to haul it off is getting ever harder; that was made clear last year when a shortage of 18-wheelers contributed to mounting piles of garbage in late spring and early summer. 
Disposal is easier and cheaper if there is less to dispose. Expanding single-stream recycling -- when paper, plastic, metal and glass are put together in recycling cans -- would help. Brookhaven saw a 25 percent increase in paper, plastic and metal collection last year via its single-stream process. Other municipalities, such as Smithtown and Huntington towns, have joined the program. Single-stream should become the norm. 
One problem is the lack of a market for some recycled materials -- glass, especially. That's where regional leadership comes in. Long Island could create its own market for recycled glass. Recyclers can partner with our wineries, microbreweries and farms, for example, to produce bottles and jars for their products. Some conversations have begun on what would be a regional win-win. 
Another promising development is a large anaerobic digester being planned in Yaphank. The facility, which turns biodegradable organic waste such as food and grass clippings into energy and compost, is in the permitting process and could face a Brookhaven Town vote this summer. Assuming all questions are answered satisfactorily, it should be approved. Organic materials are nearly 30 percent of the waste stream. 
That still leaves lots of garbage and construction debris that must be taken off Long Island. We cannot continue to rely on trucks to do it. The future is rail. Trains can haul more and do it more cheaply with less environmental damage. 
The Brookhaven Rail Terminal in Yaphank is part of the solution. So is the second railroad track being built between Ronkonkoma and Farmingdale, as well as the long-discussed third track in Nassau County. Some Queens residents have objected to expanded operations at the Fresh Ponds yard through which Long Island freight travels, but complaints about odors and loose trash, if found to be true, can be easily addressed with proper shipping techniques. A deepwater port in Shoreham would provide another exit point and more flexibility. 
As with so many Long Island issues, waste removal is handled separately by most towns, villages and cities. But the problem cries out for a regional response, with no obvious body to take the lead. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which regulates this area, should be best-positioned to show leadership but is hamstrung by budget and staffing woes. The agency must be beefed up. 
Most important, we need to act -- now. Because this is not a problem we want to face when it reaches a crisis.

VPBROOKHAVEN150711

Get ahead of LI's looming trash crisis

AIAudio - Get ahead of LI's looming trash crisis


Copy Of VPLANDFILL-2015

If those responsible for the governance of the Town of Brookhaven muster up courage enough to peek out from under the covers in the next 24 hours or so, they can wave bye-bye to their last best hope for an economically feasible way of getting rid of solid waste. 
Fed up with Brookhaven’s shilly-shallying, the Town of Hempstead set tomorrow as the deadline for coming to an agreement on a widely praised deal that would enable Brookhaven to burn some of its garbage in Hempstead’s incinerator in return for burying some of Hempstead’s incinerator ash in Brookhaven. If the response to the deadline is in keeping with Brookhaven’s tradition, town officials will do what they do best — nothing. 
Long Island’s towns had seven years to get ready for December’s official demise of landfilling as a method of garbage disposal. Brookhaven dawdled for years and then briefly considered building a $350-million incinerator. But when opposition developed, the incinerator plan was dropped, and the town proposed to embark on a nonincineration program. This was (and is) partially an extrapolation on state-of-the-art alternatives — such as composting and massive recycling — and partially a pipe dream, such as the notion that the town would somehow be able to reduce the waste stream by 190 tons a day. 
While this alternative disposal system, never before accomplished anywhere, was getting on line, the town proposed to burn some of its waste in the Hempstead incinerator, accepting ash in return. But the town’s vocal NIMBY community objected to that, and somehow the negotiations on what came to be known as the trash-for-ash deal began to falter. 
If they expire completely tomorrow, Brookhaven will have nowhere to go with a great deal of garbage. The state could order the town landfill closed. It was being held open only to facilitate the ash-disposal agreement. If the landfill closes, Brookhaven’s taxpayers will probably have to pay to have the excess tonnage hauled off Long Island. If that happens, the town’s political establishment may never come out from under the covers.

VPBROOKHAVEN910321

Wake Up, Brookhaven: Seal the Ash-Trash Deal

AIAudio - Wake Up, Brookhaven: Seal the Ash-Trash Deal


Copy Of VPLANDFILL-1991

While committees in Washington and Albany are closely examining the water-supply problems of Long Island, some local officials are behaving as if they don’t even know what a “sole source aquifer” is. 
It’s the technical term for the underground reservoir that provides water for Nassau and Suffolk. And according to the latest report of the State Legislative Commission on Water Resource Needs of Long Island, the aquifer’s quality has been deteriorating. The commission urged the development of rigid land-use controls to protect critical watershed areas. 
Shielding vulnerable land from unwise development is also the goal of an amendment to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act that would help local governments plan aquifer protection and buy land to head off development in areas that are crucial to the water supply. The amendment is sponsored by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Rep. William Carney (R-Hauppauge). 
Among those who testified in its favor was East Hampton Supervisor Mary Fallon, whose town board voted recently to impose a 90-day moratorium on residential development. The town is under enormous pressure from developers, and the moratorium is a good idea. But aside from supporting the Moynihan-Carney amendment, its officials have shown little appreciation of the importance of land-use planning. Earlier this year, the town board voted to disband the town planning department and hire an outside consultant. 
Smithtown also abolished its planning department, ostensibly to save money. But the cost of outside consultants has been so high that citizens are suing in an effort to force the reinstatement of the planners. 
In Brookhaven, the town fired its environmental protection director earlier this year. Subsequently, members of the town board decided informally to keep using the town landfill until the end of the century instead of building a proposed high-temperature incinerator. Yet Assemb. May Newburger (D-Great Neck), the co-chairman of the water resources commission, says Long Island’s landfills are so menacing to the water supply that they should be treated as hazardous waste disposal sites. According to Donald Middleton, regional director of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Brookhaven town fathers were proceeding on unrealistic assumptions. “We’ve only approved one new landfill on Long Island in seven years,” he said. “I really can’t understand how they can simply act to stop moving toward resource recovery and expect to get our continued approval to bury garbage.” 
The Nassau-Suffolk area needs a coordinated aquifer protection program, and that means officials in all 13 towns must be prepared to make tough decisions. Town boards that fire their planners or environmental advisers are ill equipped to do that.

VPBROOKHAVEN82

Taking Risks With the Island's Water Supply

AIAudio - Taking Risks With the Island’s Water Supply


AIAudio - Taking Risks With the Island's Water Supply

Copy Of VPLANDFILL-1982

Newsday Editorials: The Brookhaven landfill

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