After years of controversy and mounting public opposition to a proposed expansion of the city’s municipal landfill, Northampton city councilors last week approved an ordinance banning the development or expansion of landfills over aquifers and water supply protection districts. In effect, the ban would put an end to the highly contentious effort to expand the Northampton landfill on Glendale Road, which is due to reach capacity in 2012.
Six councilors supported the ban, including City Council President David Narkewicz and councilors Pamela Schwartz and Eugene Tacy, who authored the ordinance; three councilors opposed it. In a statement widely quoted in recent press reports, Narkewicz said the move to bring an end to consideration of a possible expansion would allow the city to focus on alternative ways of dealing with trash in Northampton.
Councilors David Murphy, Maureen Carney and Paul Spector voted against the ordinance, saying that it was largely a political move that should have been postponed until after the city concluded its review of other alternatives.
The landfill operation, as well as the plan to expand the dump over the Barnes Aquifer—an expansion for which Northampton sought and was granted a waiver from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the first and only time the state DEP has waived its restrictions on landfills over protected water sources—has become a political flashpoint in recent years. As abutters to the facility on Glendale Road mounted what became a high-profile lawsuit against the city—a lawsuit the city ultimately settled by purchasing two homes near the landfill for a total of $1.2 million—a coalition of opponents, including residents of Easthampton, which depends on the Barnes Aquifer for clean water, continued to hammer home a fairly simple but effective message: landfills and aquifers don’t mix.
The opponents were bolstered in late 2008 by statements from state public health officials, who accused Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins and other landfill proponents of misrepresenting the state’s health study of possible cancer clusters associated with the landfill. Suzanne K. Condon, state Director of the Bureau of Environmental Health, repeatedly denied claims by Higgins and other landfill supporters that the state Department of Public Health had concluded that an expanded landfill would pose no threat to public health.
Last fall, voters in Northampton overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding ballot initiative signaling opposition to the expansion of the landfill. In March of this year, the Northampton City Council passed a resolution advising the Board of Public Works, which remains steadfastly in favor of the expansion, to begin looking for alternative solutions to the city’s trash problem.
To become law, the City Council ordinance requires a second vote, which is scheduled for mid-August.
