While progressive cities all over the country have been developing "Zero Waste" plans, Northampton has, within the past 10 years, engaged in no real solid waste planning at all. After a committee convened by former mayor Mary Ford issued its final report in 1999 and disbanded, no dedicated structure for considering the future of the city's or the region's trash was convened under the new Higgins administration. "The BPW is responsible for that function," Higgins has told this reporter.
But the Board of Public Works has not, in any formal sense, pursued that objective during her tenure.
Within this vacuum, Mayor Clare Higgins has promoted a focused agenda: a 20-year, 30-acre expansion of the city-owned regional landfill on Glendale Road. The city started investing in the landfill expansion during Mayor David Musante's administration when, in 1988, 50 acres were purchased for that purpose. In 1999, during the last days of Mayor Ford's tenure, state level permitting for the Phase 5 expansion began. The city has since spent handsomely on lawyers, engineers, epidemiologists, consultants, and other vendors—either in anticipation of being granted the necessary special permit from the City Council, or as budgetary items in Higgins' ongoing battle with Citizens United for a Healthy Future, a vocal and well-organized landfill opposition group.
Higgins has been thrown a barrage of obstacles in pursuing the expansion, some inherited—such as ongoing charges that the landfill is responsible for various forms of pollution—and some new, such as the 2001 state-level determination that the landfill is sited over an aquifer recharge area. Two lawsuits are pending from Northampton citizens: one claiming that the city is in violation of zoning regulations at the facility, and the other that a nuisance condition exists in the form of unmitigated pollution and odors. The city has been forced to sponsor a number of studies to defend its position that the landfill poses no public health threat. Much press has been given to the hiring of "professional odor sniffers" to respond to complaints from the neighborhood. And that is just the short list.
Citizens United for a Healthy Future wants to close the landfill down and block its expansion. They have been relentless in their opposition to the mayor. The mayor, in turn, has been relentless in her opposition to Citizens United. This stalemate—costly, time-consuming and unproductive—has done nothing to advance open, intelligent discourse on the topic of regional solid waste management in Northampton and the greater Pioneer Valley region.
Dave Reckhow, UMass environmental engineering professor and chairman of Northampton's Board of Public Works, has emerged with a possible way around this impasse. Through quietly asserting the power of his office, which he has held since January, when city councilor Bob Reckman resigned as BPW chair, he is forcing everybody associated with the landfill expansion decisionmaking process to just slow down. Until recently, Higgins was expressing no doubt that the City Council would vote on the Glendale Road landfill expansion sometime this spring. The nine-member council would, in her words, rule on the project "when" the BPW advanced a special permit application. These days, the mayor is using the word "if."
"It's still up in the air as to whether the BPW will advance the permit application or not," Reckhow explained in a recent telephone interview. "The Board does have the power to make this choice. The issue of the landfill expansion deserves due deliberation. I don't know how everybody on the Board feels about this issue, or how they will vote. But I do know that all members want their vote to be informed by good information."
Even if the landfill is expanded, Reckhow said, the city needs to adopt a different approach to waste management. "I believe that we should be reducing our waste stream," he said. "It's going to be important to hear from experts in the field, and to consider practical, realistic, and environmentally sound strategies, including those from the Zero Waste movement."
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On November 19th at the JFK Middle School, the BPW hosted two nationally known experts on Zero Waste: Gary Liss of Gary Liss Associates and Alan Cohen, a project manager with the consulting group known as HDR. This public forum (organized with the unlikely assistance of Citizens United for a Healthy Future) was designed to gather ideas about options to a straight-vanilla landfill expansion. It was moderated by Jeff Edelstein of the Cambridge-based Consensus-Building Institute.
Californian Gary Liss has helped craft more Zero Waste community plans than any other individual in the United States. He is currently working with Los Angeles, Burbank, San Jose, Telluride, Albuquerque, and Austin, Texas—all cities that have embraced the concept. In 1975, with freshly-minted degrees from Tufts and Rutgers, he helped the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey develop a new-concept 200-acre industrial recycling park, co-located with resource recovery businesses and anchored by a waste-to-energy facility. Over the years, he has honed his approach and been at the forefront of developing practical solutions that serve the Zero Waste message.
What is meant by the term Zero Waste? At first glance, the idea seems absurd and naive. But, as Liss pointed out, when Zero Waste is viewed as a goal and as a philosophy for designing systems, it starts to come into focus. Liss told the audience that a Zero Waste system "turns material outputs from one process into resources for another. Zero Waste is a goal that is both pragmatic and visionary, where discarded materials are resources for others to use."
A resource and recovery park—which combines traditional transfer operations with a kind of reverse shopping center—can be one component of such a system, explained Liss. Small specialists such as bicycle or furniture repair shops can lease space, as can larger operations that handle compostibles, electronics, building materials, or difficult-to-recycle items—public/private partnerships can be part of the solution. Freight access, ease of use for the consumer, and co-location with a disposal option for the inevitable "residuals" are necessary components of such a park.
While resource recovery is part of the "downstream" solution, notions such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) can be part of the "upstream" strategy. The Bottle Bill is based upon EPR concepts under which the costs of product and packaging disposal are internalized. California, Minnesota and Oregon are leading the way in developing EPR standards, and a number of businesses and industries are instituting voluntary programs.
"The more you look at it, the more you start to see that waste is a design decision," Liss commented. "Climate change is the driver now. We can't recycle our way out of this situation."
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Alan Cohen is a project manager with HDR, an environmental consulting firm which employs 7,500 people in 165 locations worldwide. HDR was described by Cohen as the "number one solid waste consulting company in the U.S."
Cohen explained that HDR works with Gary Liss and respects his work, but that they differ from his philosophy in one key area: HDR is pro-waste-to-energy (WTE). That is, HDR believes that "processing technologies" which produce gas or electricity from garbage can be part of the zero waste definition. "For us, zero waste means zero waste to the landfill," he explained. Cohen then delivered a spate of technical information on the pros and cons of aerobic and anaerobic digestion, plasma arc gasification, pyrolysis, autoclaving, and so-called "low-emission" incineration.
Some in the audience expressed frustration at this high-tech tutorial. "Northampton is not going to build a pyrolysis plant," remarked one. "The upfront capital cost would be out of sight, and we don't have the economy of scale necessary in Western Mass. to operate it efficiently. Why are we even talking about this?"
"We're still in the process of developing the scope of our options study," returned Reckhow. "Not every idea presented here tonight is going to work for us. But it's important for the board to understand the range of solutions and technologies that are out there. We'll narrow this down over the coming weeks at our board meetings, which the public is welcome to attend."
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Over the next several weeks, the Board of Public Works will define the scope of a solid waste "options study," which will be prepared by Stantec and HDR consultants in collaboration with Liss. Originally this study was to examine only a limited set of scenarios. But both Higgins and Reckhow now agree that the study must be more robust.
The BPW might reasonably, within its options study, examine whether Northampton wishes to host a landfill or not. Both Liss and Cohen emphasized that there is no specific reason why Northampton itself should feel compelled to host a disposal facility, and that regional, or even Northeast-wide solutions should be considered.
Six months ago, the 30-acre, 20-year expansion plan—with no attendant exit strategy—was the only option on the table. Now, remarkably, parties with divergent points of view are talking, and the discussion has been enriched by the input of disinterested experts. Notwithstanding the ongoing high-stakes game between Higgins and Citizens United, the Board of Public Works actually holds the cards at this point.
The Board of Public Works is a volunteer committee that advises the Department of Public Works, sets policy, and awards contracts. The members are appointed by the mayor with City Council confirmation. The BPW meets on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month at 5:30 p.m at the DPW Building at 125 Locust Street, and can be reached at (413) 584-1570.
