From Citizens United for a Healthy Future:
The chronic noxious odors are caused by chemical gas emissions at the Northampton Regional landfill. The DPW will be discussing work to be done at the landfill to try to address some of the noxious odors.
The DPW is conducting the meeting, the City Council will be there and the DEP and Ameresco have been invited.
Please attend and voice your concerns at the open public session.
At the City Council meeting on last week, Ned Huntley of the Northampton DPW told the Northampton City Council that there was enough money to close the landfill. Northampton taxpayers would come out ahead, if the landfill did not expand. An expansion would entail several million dollars in bonds in addition to the environmental and health concerns involved.
As time draws closer to the Special Permit vote, the DPW is still trying to continue down the path of setting two environmentally negative precedents for the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The first precedent is applying for the precedent setting waiver to expand the regional landfill over the Barnes Aquifer into the “Zone II” for Easthampton. This environmentally negative precedent has never been done before in MA.
The second precedent is to exempt a landfill in a Water Supply Protection area (WSP).
The Water Supply Protection district created by Williamsburg to protect Northampton’s drinking water supply bans landfills. The other three Water Supply Protection districts in Northampton ban landfills. In fact, all Water Supply Protection districts in MA ban landfills. However, Northampton created a fourth Water Supply Protection district in order to expand the landfill. If the Special Permit passes, landfills will be exempted from this fourth Water Supply Protection district.
Northampton can change the way we deal with trash today by adopting the three R’s when dealing with trash. The first step is to reduce the amount of garbage while increasing recycling and re-use whenever possible. Revenues from the increased recycling would be used to offset the costs of waste disposal. Less garbage and increased recycling leads to decreased costs.
Let’s save the environment for the future. This is a better vision for Northampton. It is time for a change and time to embark on a new path.
Please attend and voice your concerns during open public session.
Thanks,
—
Citizens United for a Healthy Future
Northampton/Easthampton
SAVE THE AQUIFER
Protect our drinking water – Stop the landfill expansion
www.savingparadise.info
Above from the Community Radio Hour with Mary Serreze
Below from Disposable Planet:
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Landfills
Landfills are giant rubbish tips, ranging worldwide from open mountains of unmanaged waste, to enclosed, highly-monitored “sanitary landfills” designed to entomb refuse for years.
They present significant health and environmental risks if not well-designed and maintained.
Heaps of waste generate methane, a greenhouse gas. If the technology and funding is available, this can be monitored, released under control and in some cases harnessed as an energy source.
But the risk of explosions and fires is a potential hazard, both in developing countries, where scavengers often trawl through open dumps, and also in countries such as the US, where landfill blazes are thought to be among the largest sources of emissions of toxic chemicals called dioxins.
Birth defects
The other main risk is of toxic substances being washed from the site and contaminating water supplies and land. The threat can be reduced by situating landfills away from areas vulnerable to flooding or earthquakes, lining the site and draining and treating contaminated water from it – again, only if the money and expertise are available.
A few studies in developed countries have shown a correlation between proximity to landfill sites and birth defects – although other factors, such as the income levels of people living near rubbish tips, may play a role.
Finding sites for landfills is also an issue, as space is a valuable commodity in the urban areas where most waste is generated and local opposition is often vehement.
While some decomposition goes on in a landfill, such sites keep the water, biological organisms and light needed to speed the process to a minimum, Decades-old colouring book pages and carrot tops were found intact when a site in Phoenix, US was excavated in one study.
Once landfill sites are filled to capacity and given time to “stabilise”, they are covered and often turned into parks or golf-courses, or, if the waste is sufficiently compacted, built on – although health fears have triggered local opposition to some such projects.
