The Northampton Department of Public Works (DPW), under the leadership of Director Edward S. Huntley and City Engineer James R. Laurila, is pushing forward in its pursuit of longstanding plans to expand its 39-acre regional landfill, located at Glendale Road off Route 66, near the Easthampton line. The expansion plan—known as Phase 5/Phase 5B—would add approximately 20 acres to the north, and another 10 acres piggybacked on the side slopes of the current site. The design will add another 20 years to the lifespan of the facility, based upon a fill rate of 50,000 tons per year. If the City of Northampton does nothing, the current site will reach capacity in two to three years.
The landfill expansion plans have been extremely controversial. A group called Citizens United for a Healthy Future have fought the city every step of the way, citing concerns about the Barnes Aquifer—part of which underlies the landfill—surface water and well contamination, noise, traffic, odors, financial liability, and environmental justice. By now, photos have been widely published of the Hannum Brook, downgradient from the landfill, bright orange with a layer of gelatinous iron floc. A recent test of the brook has measured arsenic at levels that exceed state standards. While the DPW and its consultants at Stantec maintain that the Hannum Brook is "in good shape," others disagree. "When I was a kid I used to fish in that brook," remarked Easthampton resident Andrew Woodland at a recent public meeting. "Now I wouldn't go near it."
In the spirit of George Santayana, who once quipped that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," this writer decided to take a trip through time—back to the late '60s, when the Northampton landfill initially was being proposed and developed. Was it as difficult for a city to site a landfill then as it seems to be now? Were there environmental concerns voiced at the time? Which of those concerns, if any, have proven to be valid?
The landfill has been in operation since July of 1969, about a year and a half after Calduwood Enterprises, one of whose officials was engineer Almer Huntley (the current DPW chief's father), first proposed the use of the Omasta gravel pit as a site for a sanitary landfill. The city had been operating an open-face burning dump on Easthampton Road, and was under pressure from Clean Air Act regulations to change its practice.
The siting issue was contentious even back then. The Northampton Board of Public Health, in March of 1968, initially recommended against the use of the gravel pit for a landfill "in view of the ground water potential of the site." But the State Department of Public Health, two months later, gave its provisional OK to the city, persuaded by a technical report submitted by the elder Huntley. The report proposed that the site could be developed "without undue hazard to the groundwater potential of the area," and the DPH concurred, with a caveat: it asked the Northampton Board of Health to ascertain first that there were no plans in the works to develop the area as a drinking water source.
A consulting engineer retained by the Northampton Board of Health, one Edson F. White, recommended caution. In a May 29, 1968 letter to local health officials he asked, "Does the Board have the right to grant a waste disposal assignment to land, where water pollution will result?" A month later, he argued that the site assignment would not have been made contingent upon a lack of plans to develop drinking water supplies if there were no underlying assumption that pollution would occur. In August of that year, White counseled John Joyce, chair of the Northampton Solid Waste Disposal Committee, that the Hannum Brook, which abuts the Omasta property, would in all likelihood become polluted as well.
These questions apparently prompted the local Board of Health, which was responsible for issuing a site permit, to spend some time in deliberation. Calduwood Enterprises consequently retained a law firm. In October of 1968, the board received a terse letter from Main Street attorney William H. Welch: "Gentlemen: On behalf of Calduwood, Inc., I would appreciate it if you could tell me what reason, if any, exists why the Calduwood site on Glendale Road cannot be assigned as a dump site. I would like to have this reason so that we could try to remove any obstacles to its assignment."
A subsequent letter from Attorney Welch was referred to William Doubleday, P.E., of the State Division of Water Pollution Control. In response, Doubleday assured Welch that "a properly designed, properly operated sanitary landfill operation would not pollute Hannum Brook." Doubleday would be satisfied if there were a "four-foot vertical distance between the rubbish and the historical high ground water level" and if a "50-foot horizontal distance was maintained between the rubbish and any stream."
The local board of health, chaired by Cornelius F. O'Neil, chose to stand up to Welch. Their October 18 response to the law firm expressed a refusal to consider site assignment until the pollution threat was defined, pollution prevention measures were detailed, and an insurance policy was issued to protect the city for up to two years after the termination of all dumping activites. "The Board of Health," they concluded, "are of the opinion that the Calduwood Enterprises have failed to show conclusively that they can control within their bounds any and all pollution which may result at this location."
Calduwood, in an October 21 letter signed by president Armand Duseau, Jr., submitted a detailed letter to the Board of Health demonstrating insurance coverage and outlining its intent to control pollution: it would line the bottom of the pit with clay and silt, grade the surface of the fill, provide a system of drainage pipes and a lagoon filtration operation "if necessary," and install monitoring wells.
Edson White, surmising that Calduwood had retained professional advice on pollution control, finally issued a lukewarm recommendation of the use of the Omasta site: "If the Calduwood Enterprises people meet the requirements… we cannot see reasonable justification… not to grant the assignment." Two months later, in January of 1969, the Northampton Board of Health granted its approval of the placement of the landfill on the Omasta site on Glendale Road.
Other sites in Northampton were still being considered, however, and White continued to advocate against the use of the Omasta gravel pit, citing concerns about Hannum Brook. "Dear Sir," he wrote to State Sanitary Engineering Director Angelo Iantosca in 1969, "You have stated on a number of occasions recently, that there will be no pollution to the Hannum Brook resulting from a properly operated sanitary landfill operation at the Omasta Gravel Pit. It is obvious that we differ in professional opinion… substances in solution such as organic acids, carbonates, salts, etc., can travel great distances even through tight formations."
White's Cassandra call went unheeded. On March 6, 1969, the Northampton City Council voted to select the Omasta site for its municipal "sanitary landfill." White sent a 21-point letter of protest to City Council President Edward Gross. On April 21, 1969, Edson F. White, principal of the Utility Survey Engineering Corp., was thanked for his work by the chair of the Solid Waste Disposal Committee and informed "with much regret" that his services for the city were "now concluded."
William Doubleday, White's old adversary from the Massachusetts Division of Water Pollution Control, three weeks later submitted a letter of documentation to several state and local boards asserting that because the term "water pollution" is narrowly defined, water pollution cannot exist "legally and in actual fact" at the Hannum Brook, since there is no "contravention of standards." He went on to slip in the following statement: "The writer has noted iron oxide slimes in the vicinity of the seeps (so-called 'springs') located on the banks of the Hannum Brook, coming from the interface between the outwash gravel of the Calduwood site and the underlying silt-sand formations. The writer would like to make this fact a matter of record so that if this site is used ultimately, for sanitary landfill purposes, these seeps of iron oxide will not be misconstrued as having the landfill as its source."
(This statement has been referred to by Mayor Higgins in conversations with this writer in recent months in the context of discussions about the Hannum Brook. "It's been documented that there was already iron staining at the Hannum Brook before we even built the landfill," Higgins said.)
The City of Northampton was under the gun: a Hampshire Superior Court ruling had decreed that no open burning of trash at the Easthampton Road dump would be allowed after July 1, 1969. On June 23, the 52-acre Glendale Road site was taken by eminent domain for the sum of $20,486 to be paid to Steven P. Cahillane, Armand J. Duseau Jr., and William L. Wood of Calduwood Enterprises, who had exercised an option to purchase the land from Edward and Paul Omasta, Jr.
Calduwood almost immediately started operating the dump, even though they were unhappy with the terms of the land taking. They again retained Attorney William Welch. On June 17, 1971, the City Council effected a settlement with the three, agreeing to pay a total sum of $110,000 for the property. The Glendale Road Sanitary Landfill was alive and kicking.
20-20 Hindsight
Back in the late '60s, city officials were clearly in a very difficult position. The Board of Health was under intense time pressure to site a landfill. When Calduwood Enterprises emerged with a solution, and with the gumption and resources necessary to solve the problem, it may have seemed like a godsend to some.
Edward Gross, who was the president of the City Council back then, still lives in the house where he was born in 1936, on Hockanum Road. (The city's wastewater treatment plant sits on land that his father once owned.)
"I'm an old man and my memory is not what it used to be," he told the Advocate. "But let me tell you, we were under a lot of pressure from the state. The state was driving this thing; they really wanted it to happen, because we couldn't burn trash anymore. And there was a problem with the burning dump. There was a swamp next to it; there was a pollution problem.
"Those boys who started Calduwood—Billy Wood, Armand Duseau and Steve Cahillane—they had been big football players, Northampton High School, Class of '53, and that was a championship team. That's how they knew each other. They were hard-working, diligent young men. And Duseau's dad had a dump truck that he used to pick up trash for people—this was before people had their own cars. The boys used to work for him. That's how the whole thing started. One lousy dumptruck and an old man picking up trash.
"That gravel pit was just a hole in the ground. It seemed to make a lot of sense to put the dump there. We kept getting told that the Hannum Brook would be fine. You have to understand, this was a new concept then, the idea of burying trash in a landfill.
"Those were some pretty wild times. You had the mayor storming out of City Council meetings, and pretty much a 4-4 split on the Council, so I'd end up being the deciding vote a lot. I had a job and a family, and four nights a week I was at meetings. The city councilors did the best we could with the information we had. Edson White wanted us to use the Sena property on Park Hill Road, but you know what? There were problems with that site, too. There's no good solution to problems like this."
So is there anything to be learned from the past? Then, as now, there was time pressure. Then, as now, the state was involved and seemed to be supporting the landfill enterprise. Then, as now, city councilors and board members were being asked to believe in the virtues of a new technology that they were not fully equipped to understand. Consultants took the stage, voices of warning were dismissed, and the most expedient, cost-effective solution was promoted.
It must be acknowledged, though, that the landfill has served an important public purpose. Until we become a zero-waste culture, as some propose, we will need a place to put our trash. In siting such a noxious but societally necessary facility, compromises are inevitable. But the question still remains: is maintaining and expanding the landfill at the Glendale Road site, with its many documented problems, a good idea? If we choose to say "no," then what will we do? Are we truly giving adequate deliberation to all the options?
Under the best scenario, Northampton would study the best, most progressive regional solid waste solutions available. San Francisco, Portland, Maine, and Nantucket Island are but three examples of communities that have chosen to commit to bold, sustainable policies. Such a path would require imagination, courage, and political will. Northampton, with its national profile as an enlightened community, could choose to set an example for the rest of the country: to take a deep breath, back up a bit, let go of entrenched positions, and think. The clock is ticking.
