And why the public policy of expanding the landfill does not deal with our waste problem
Guest Editorial by Jesus Leyva
First I want the people reading this article to have a context for understanding where this piece of writing comes from and why I wrote it. I originally became aware of the issue of the expansion of the Northampton Regional Landfill (NRL) when approached by a person petitioning against its expansion in late summer 2007. She was employed by Toxics Action and was working with the Northampton/Easthampton based citizens group Citizens United for a Healthy Future. She approached me while I was standing on the corner of King and Main Street in Northampton, introduced her cause and asked me to sign a petition and to list my contact information. I initially refused not knowing anything about the issue. She told me if I wanted to learn more I could attend a regular meeting of Citizens United and inquire. Before long I found myself going to these meetings as well as City Council meetings, Board of Public Works meetings and even some of the state meetings where solid waste disposal or the NRL specifically was an agenda item in order to get a clearer idea of what the issue is. Over time I have accumulated ample information but beyond that I have no formal education on the subject, nor do I have a professional background in solid waste disposal. I currently work at a Northampton downtown restaurant. The closest I come to having first-hand knowledge of solid waste management is in viewing what gets thrown away at the places I have worked and the disposal of my personal waste at home.
For those of you who are not familiar with the NRL and its expansion I am going to try and summarize some key points as they relate to the rest of the article. The city of Northampton acquired the private landfill on Glendale Road which was founded in 1969 and run as a private business by a company known as Calduwood. After that the city received some state financial assistance to turn it into the NRL. Then state environmental laws were created designating certain areas of Massachusetts as Zone II Water Protection Areas in order to protect against the pollution of drinking water drawn from land. Landfills are currently banned from operating in Zone II Water Protection Areas. The current NRL and the proposed expansion fall within such an area because the Barnes Aquifer that provides water to the Maloney Well in Easthampton is near this area. The NRL is permitted to accept 50,000 tons of waste per year and charges a tipping fee of approximately $70 a ton for entities to dispose of trash in the landfill that are not exempt. This pays for the operation, maintenance and all other related costs of the NRL including closure and construction costs. As a result, the city budget benefits from the NRL by combining the host community fee of $468 thousand and in-kind contributions for a total amount in excess of $850 thousand ($345 thousand actually goes to pay for city staffers and/or city staff time that facilitates the operation of the NRL.)
The city also incurs the liabilities, environmental issues and additional costs of the NRL that fall outside of this equation, including but not limited to the cost of the liability insurance that is required by law, various legal fees and litigation costs including the $1.2 million dollar settlement for the purchase of properties of former abutters, the planning costs for studying the expansion and the cost of odor mitigation. This is not including the possible future cost of Barnes Aquifer remediation and the possible loss of future drinkable water.
Let's not forget, this is also a landfill, it accumulates mixed waste and that waste stays here. If expanded the landfill will reach capacity in approximately twenty years and this conversation will begin again. So it has been the policy of the city and its elected officials to expand the NRL citing the need for waste disposal, the lack of alternatives and the increased cost of disposal if it is not expanded.
I do not believe we should expand the landfill and I am prepared to explain why.
Instead of expanding the NRL we could do something different with the 15,000 tons of waste the city is estimated to produce daily. Using information from the Alternatives Report (PDF) and very conventional information on solid waste management we can identify and isolate various components of our waste stream and institute new public policies, fund infrastructure and collaborate with the entire community to bring us to a lower amount of residual waste which would be feasible to send to an existing landfill within the context of our budget.
To begin with we would initiate a citywide curbside collection program which gives us a greater degree of control over the waste stream and is more cost effective for residents who contract with commercial haulers for waste removal because of the economies of scale.
Our city would have to work towards full compliance with the Recycling Ordinance from all city residents, commercial entities, non-profit organizations, other institutions and the city itself. Currently we do not have full compliance. Some of these entities of their own volition do comply with the ordinance. Others do not. To remedy this the city would have to hire a full time employee solely responsible for enforcing compliance with commercial entities and conducting outreach and educational efforts. If if the city chooses to do this the money to pay for the salary of this staff person would be recouped from the additional revenue generated from the sales of recyclable materials to the Springfield Materials Recovery Facility. The costs of hauling the recyclables to the facility is already covered by the sales of the materials at a rate locked in at $15 a ton plus additional money based on the market. Paper and paperboard alone counts for 30% of the waste stream (or 4,500 tons annually). The handling of recyclables could be handled at the Locust Street Transfer Station or at the NRL on Glendale Road.
Furthermore we could divert all of the organic waste the city generates by creating a composting program similar to the former Smith Vocational and Agricultural School (SVAS) composting program, which when it was active was permitted by the state to accept fifteen tons of food waste was per day. The method of composting used turned the compost into a salable product in three months. However there is a conventional method for turning compost over in twenty-eight days that was developed in Connecticut and is still in use there. The International Process System is also in use on a smaller scale at Riker's Island (permitted for ten tons of organic waste a day) and on a larger scale at the New Jersey Biosolids and Yard Trimmings Compost Facility (permitted for 500 tons per day). If we sought out information on this operation and attempted to replicate it we could create a facility in Northampton that could accept thirty or more tons of organic waste a day (given the SVAS facility accepted fifteen tons a day, requiring three months to turn the material into a salable product and instead using the International Process System (HTML) which would allow the city to turn over the same amount of material in a third of the time). This would give the city a site with the capacity for the disposal of all the organic waste the city could generate if we assume, based on the Alternatives Study, that 35% of the waste is organic. Approximately 5,250 tons a year of organic waste is generated in the city (yard trimmings and food waste) and the facility would be permitted to accept up to thirty tons a day. Assuming there are 300 operating days a year (which excludes holidays and other non-operating days) about 9,000 tons of organic waste could be disposed of annually.
Various startup costs could be facilitated with grants from the Massachusetts State Department of Environmental Protection's Sustainable Materials Recovery Program which is still in its formulation stage. In addition the operation and maintenance costs of the facility could also be paid for through a combination of the allocation of a portion of the city's meals tax to this program, the sales of the processed organic material to existing United States Department of Agriculture outlets and through additional tipping fees charged to commercial haulers that bring source separated organic waste to the facility.
If the city decided to proceed with this or a similar plan some infrastructure exists from the discontinued SVAS program and we can plan around some of the problems that occurred with that facility, whether at the same location or a different one. The major past issue with the program was due to the fact that inorganic waste was accepted intermingled with organic waste. This required an additional screening process which caused a backlog in the work and ultimately prevented the facility from accepting additional organic waste. To address that issue clear and strict protocols must be in place requiring entities bringing waste to the facility to source separate the waste so that only organic material is deposited. Entities not in compliance with these requirements would have their loads rejected. If loads from a particular source are rejected on a regular basis that entity's use of the facility would be discontinued. It is not unreasonable to require source separated organic waste as some city residents, one of the public schools and some restaurants are successful in achieving this goal. Waste generating entities in the city would have an economic incentive to bring organic waste to the facility because the facility would accept the organic waste from haulers at a tipping fee below the market rate. Commercial entities could see a reduction in their overall waste disposal costs because of sending source separated organic waste to this facility.
The program would be staffed by the Department of Public Works. The city would enter into a legally binding obligation to fund mitigation of odor and off site pollution from the operation. This could be addressed through application of the same technologies currently used at the NRL or other existing conventional technologies used for odor mitigation at landfills and similar facilities.
Municipal entities, such as the schools, would be required to participate in the program and would be allowed to use the facility for free. Commercial entities wishing to use the facility could contract with existing commercial haulers that would have Memorandums of Understanding with the city. Alternatively commercial entities could contract directly with the city to have the organic waste handled and hauled.
After removing organic waste and recyclables we could divert more waste by instituting a take-it-or-leave-it program or a free store at the existing Locust Street Transfer Station, the NRL or another outlet of our creation in the city. We could have multiple outlets, work with charity services to donate such goods, collaborate with various online outlets for free used goods such as Freecycle or Craig's List. We could work with a Salvation Army or for-profit used merchandise store, or create our own. The facility would be provided by the city and be staffed by volunteers with an existing or new paid staff person supervising the free store and/or item exchange program.
Accompanying this would be an aggressive public outreach and education program to convey to residents the importance of simple purchasing decisions that can make a difference between the need to dispose of a container that is not reusable or recyclable versus one that is. Examples of this are buying milk in a bottle that requires a deposit instead of a carton. Such efforts could be conducted by the formation of a city wide coalition that includes Green Northampton, Pioneer Valley Local First, neighborhood associations and students from various colleges and schools through an internship program. Finally city officials and volunteers, led by the Solid Waste Advisory Subcommittee of the Board of Public Works, would coordinate the coalition. Additional programs could be implemented at the SVAS to teach repair and reuse of various electronics, appliances and textiles goods.
Finally our City Council, working with our State Senator and Representative, could enact resolutions to endorse legislation at the state level that takes the burden off of consumers and municipalities for dealing with the cost of waste disposal and shifts it to the manufacturers. Additionally legislators could support regulations that would divert waste from the city, such as an expanded bottle bill or a bill that deals with electronic waste.
Factoring in all of these diversion efforts we might be able to achieve the diversion of many thousands of tons of solid waste leaving us with a residual component in the range of 1,000-3,000 tons annually. It would be reasonable to pay for disposal of this reduced amount in the context of our general city budget. A disposal cost of $100 a ton for 3,000 tons would leave the city with an annual bill of about $300 thousand for the removal of residual municipal waste. The residual waste could be stored at the existing NRL until transferred to another facility.
This is a proposal that would take several years to implement. Consider the costs of expanding the NRL not only in terms of the environment, but in terms of quality of life, health and the economic uncertainties and liabilities of our current model of solid waste management. It is possible that the model proposed here or some variation of it could prove to be equally viable or more economically feasible with the potential for long term success and a greater degree of control than our current model.
On the subject of our current model, the public policy of expanding the NRL is both counter-intuitive to the goal of minimizing the waste the city produces and could also cost the taxpayers money. With respect to the first part of that statement it was Mayor Clare Higgins who said during a mayoral debate at the Finn-Ryan Road School that people will pull more recyclables out of their trash if it costs more to dispose of it. The current operations of the NRL and its expansion subsidize waste removal for residents and provide a below market rate to commercial haulers for the disposal of waste at $72.50 a ton, which was previously lower.
We (the taxpayers of Northampton) may also be left with the debt the city will incur from the cost of expanding the landfill, $13 million and climbing. If you look at the current Memorandum of Understanding and one from a few years ago, several of the municipalities that direct hauled their residential waste to the NRL are now going elsewhere. At a public forum the Board of Public Works conducted upon release of the Alternatives Study, its Director Ned Huntley confirmed this. Page 100 of the Alternatives Study details the economic risk involved with expansion if it proceeds without binding contracts for the commercial haulers and muncipalities that dispose of waste at the NRL.
The alternative ideas outlined above use information readily available to our city. I feel that this begs the question: What alternatives model could the Department of Public Works have come up with had they been instructed by our elected officials to pursue a solid waste management plan that did not include the expansion of the NRL? The NRL is scheduled to close in 2011 and will remain closed if the expansion does not go forward. The city's administration has been aware of this for some time. Again, what could have been done differently if instead of planning for an expansion the city planned for the closure of the NRL and initiated an integrated solid waste material management program with the goal of achieving the smallest residual amount of waste that would have to be disposed of in a landfill?
Perhaps the blame for this lies with the Massachusetts DEP which issued the waiver in June of 2006 that is allowing our city the option of expanding the NRL in a Zone II Water Protection Area. Without this waiver the city of Northampton would have been forced to explore alternatives to expanding the NRL. What planning could the city have done in the five years from the moment the waiver should have been denied to the moment that the landfill reaches capacity in 2011?
Jesus Leyva at onomonanime@aim.com
