Stantec and the Northampton landfill's sunk costs

Early this past summer When I contacted Ned Huntley, Chief of the Northampton Department of Public Works, I was hoping to learn more about how the DPW functions, how it is funded, and specifically how much the city has remunerated Stantec, the environmental firm that has been studying the proposed landfill expansion known as Phase 5.

According to their web site, Stantec, formerly known as Dufresne-Henry, Inc., employs 9,000 people in 125 locations in North America, including a location in Northampton. Self described as a growth company their annual revenues are approaching $1 billion and Northampton has been contributing a share of that figure. Since 2004 through this past July the value of the contracts for Stantec's work related to the proposed Phase 5 expansion stands at $609 thousand and the total value of all Stantec-DPW landfill contracts is $1.289 million, though not all of the contracts had been paid as of that time according to Joe Cook, Northampton's procurement officer. From 1999-2004 Stantec was awarded other contracts with the city for non-landfill related services worth another $139.3 thousand for a grand total of $1.429 million in contracts over the past nine years. The total of all seventy-nine landfill related contracts dating to December 30, 2003 equals $5.2 million.

Records on landfill contracts prior to December 2003 were not included on the hand written ledger that was presented to me by the DPW because the city's Board of Health once managed landfill operations. It was a bit of a surprise to me that contract records of this nature are recorded only with pen and paper and are not available in the form of an electronic spreadsheet. I presumed to contact the DPW and within minutes or hours have someone send to me the information electronically. Rather failure to modernize this aspect of DPW administration induced upon me and others a requirement to visit the DPW in person and to sift through records and transcribe them manually. In my case I brought along a camera.

Landfill contract sheet February-July 2008

From Stantec's web site: "To provide greatly needed solid waste disposal capacity, the city of Northampton retained Stantec to design one of the first lined landfills ever to be constructed in Massachusetts. Over successive years, Stantec designed the Phase 4 expansion as well [as] closures of the various phases of the landfill. In addition, Stantec designed the closure of the 22-acre, unlined landfill that the city used before constructing its lined facility, and has routinely provided landfill gas monitoring services there.” Plans for the proposed Phase 5 expansion call for double composite 60 mil liners [about 1/16 of an inch thick apiece] each having two feet of clay, plus leak detection and leachate collection systems.

After he was appointed to head the DPW Mr. Huntley hired Mr. James Laurila as the city's engineer, a position that he had held himself prior to becoming DPW Chief. For his part Mr. Laurila previously worked for Stantec and helped to develop the contaminant fate transport model that expansion advocates use to argue on behalf of the safety of the proposed expansion. This model indicates that if there was a catastrophic release of leachate under severe conditions such as a drought, that the Maloney Well, a part of the Barnes Aquifer, would experience no harm. Dr. Peter Shanahan, an MIT professor and city consultant from HydroAnalysis, Inc., who also worked on the fate transport model, confirmed this view at a July 15 public forum on regional water resources held at JFK Middle School in the Florence section of Northampton. Smith College geology professor Dr. Robert Newton, who spoke at the forum as a representative from the Barnes Aquifer Protection Advisory Committee, dismisses some aspects of these findings.

As has been written elsewhere, Dr. Newton asserts that levels of toxins leaching from the landfill are increasing and points to the chemical results of recent well and ground water testing as evidence. Dr. Newton's testimony was compelling. He said, “The landfill is a liability,” and added, “As you build up the waste in the landfill it has got to be preserved forever, not 50 years, not 100 years, it has got to be kept from leaching forever.” Dr. Newton concluded, “I don't care what you put down there, it's not going to last forever, so remediation will be needed, and you know what, it will be really expensive, it's going to cost a lot of money. What my big concern is here is that the cost of the expansion of the landfill will ultimately be borne by our children because of its future impact. We're already seeing that things are happening and I think we know, given this location, it's only going to get worse in the future.”

Dr. Shanahan confirmed that in his opinion there would be some leakage from Stantec's new liners immediately, albeit minimal, should the city move forward with expansion plans. He reasoned with regards to leachate that the “source strength of the landfill would diminish over time” and that the clay soil barriers that Stantec would add beneath the plastic liners should be very robust and self healing should the ground shift or the liners fail. Dr. Newton maintains however, that should leakage occur, leachate and water could move through the other natural clay barriers that protect the aquifer. This could happen horizontally he asserts, as opposed to vertically due to the layering of clay and sediment that occurred over the centuries with the changes of seasons. He further added that geographically only 10% of Northampton lies over the recharge area, and that 90% of Northampton would be more suitable for a landfill than its present location. During the forum it was pointed out that Dr. Newton considered the two existing capped Easthampton landfills located nearby while Dr. Shanahan did not factor those into his analysis. Their presence is a reality however that should be considered.

While Stantec is a firm that performs reputable services, the fact that DPW officials have allocated more than $625 thousand from the landfill stabilization fund to them and two other vendors toward planning the Phase 5 proposal prior to applying for the special permit that would allow the expansion speaks loudly. It seems to me that before the city spent such a significant sum planning for landfill expansion that the moral question of whether or not we should expand the regional facility should have been addressed first, with more community deliberation, feedback and buy-in. As things now appear to be out of order, if the city council decides not to grant the DPW a special permit to proceed with the proposed expansion, the funds (also known as sunk costs) expended to this point will be deemed wasted. As local decision makers assert that they will weigh all of the information available to them before rendering a decision, the impetus to forge ahead that stems from the expenditures that I've outlined above cannot be overlooked or discounted.