by Olivia Raimonde, Annie Todd and Chris Polansky
Hakes Landfill in Steuben County. The site is looking to expand despite outcry from environmental groups about its acceptance of fracking waste from Pennsylvania. Source: Google Earth Pro
In Rensselaer County, nestled next to New York’s capital of Albany, dust from construction trash at the Dunn landfill drifts to a nearby school. Students and residents have reported noxious air and elevated asthma rates since the landfill opened in 2015. This year, the state fined the owners $35,000 for failing to curtail dust and the corrosive, rotten eggs-smelling hydrogen sulfide wafting from the site.
In Yates County, tucked along the Finger Lakes, the Lockwood Hills landfill is still operating despite a state violation for damaging local groundwater. Additionally, New York declared surface water within a mile unsafe for drinking, upsetting residents -- who say Lockwood Hills is, in part, to blame -- and burdening homeowners left to scramble for ways to find safe water for their homes.
In Steuben County, the Hakes landfill is bringing in fracking waste from just across the border in Pennsylvania -- even though New York state has rejected fracking for extracting oil and gas. Residents claim those ground up rocks from across the border pose a health hazards to those who live near nearby.
A NYC News Service review of private and publicly-owned landfills in New York State shows violations ranging from taking in more waste than the landfill can handle, to polluted rainwater running off into lakes, that are jeopardizing the health and environment of surrounding communities.
New York needs to find a place to store the millions of tons of waste it and surrounding areas produce each year. More than 100 landfills exist across the state. Most people throw away garbage and never think about it again, but for the people who live in the communities where this waste goes it can be a very different story.
While most records are not available to the public, the NYC News Service obtained a portion of these records that shows dozens of violations against landfills. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, is responsible for regulating landfills and approving operating permits. It inspects landfills and issues violations for sites that aren’t following state rules.
The review also showed multiple lawsuits illustrating grave concerns community members have about these waste storage facilities in their backyard like taking in fracking waste from Pennsylvania.
“We don't have strong or effective regulation of solid waste facilities, not only in New York, but the whole country,” said Judith Enck, former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and deputy secretary for the environment in the New York governor's office. “You would think New York might be a little bit more sophisticated than other states, but big companies come in with permit applications and DEC almost always approves these permits.”
It’s these permits that lead to issues at landfills like Dunn, Lockwood Hills and Hakes. Facilities not adhering to the environmental and health guidelines outlined in their permits can lead to a violation. This is the case at Dunn and Lockwood Hills that have paid out over $35,000 and $1 million, respectively, addressing violations at its landfills related to air and water quality issues.
And at Hakes, it is its request to be granted a permit to expand its facility that resulted in community members and activists to sue the landfill in an attempt to prevent this from happening.
“DEC strictly monitors permitted activities at landfills in New York State to ensure the protection of public health and the environment,” the agency wrote in an emailed statement to the NYC News Service. “Permit applications are rigorously reviewed and if approved, permit conditions are put into place to prevent off-site impacts.”
DUNN LANDFILL
Andrew Kretzschmar is worried about school. That’s not unusual for a high school senior. But his main concern isn’t AP tests or college essays – it’s his health, and whether the air in and around his school is making him sick.
“You go to school, you smell the hydrogen sulfide, you smell the rotten eggs,” Kretzschmar, 17, said. “It makes an uncomfortable learning experience.”
Kretzschmar goes to the only public high school in Rensselaer, New York, a small city of about 10,000 in New York’s Capital Region, directly across the Hudson River from the state capital of Albany. The high school is part of a campus where all of Rensselaer’s K-12 public school students attend, about a thousand kids altogether.
But the most remarkable thing about the campus isn’t on school property – it’s right next to it. Just southwest of school grounds sits the massive S.A. Dunn construction and demolition debris landfill. It started operating in 2015. At 99 acres, it’s the largest of its kind in the state. Kretzschmar says the smells and dust from the dump blow over into the school just about every day, and he and his parents suspect it’s making it hard for him to breathe.
“I take my inhaler most every single day,” Kretzschmar said. “I haven’t done that since I was a little kid. I thought my asthma was getting better, but it’s worsening.”
Dunn Landfill, a construction and demolition site in Rensselaer County, New York. Dust from the landfill blows downwind towards a nearby school (upper right hand corner). Source: Google Earth Pro
When the DEC approved the landfill in 2012, the site’s environmental impact statement included rebuttals from the landfill operator to numerous public comments and concerns. DEC defended the landfill saying in a statement that it “is not anticipated to have adverse health effects to the surrounding community.” Yet the landfill was cited with a violation in 2018 for its inability to manage dust and hydrogen sulfide emissions coming from the site and was charged a $35,000 fine by DEC.
According to the CDC, at certain levels, chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide can cause “ low blood pressure, headache, nausea, loss of appetite, weight loss, ataxia, eye-membrane inflammation, and chronic cough” in children.
On a November evening, the gym of the town’s Boys and Girls Club hosted a public meeting of the Rensselaer Environmental Coalition, a group that formed in opposition to the landfill. About 100 people gathered at long tables to hear from Dr. Ward Stone, a retired scientist from DEC.
“Your kids are smelling bad smells,” Stone said. “You know they’re taking in hydrogen sulfide. And what else? What’s in the dust that blows off of there? It is possible that what a child is exposed to now will be a problem for that child in 30 or 40 or 50 years. Now, if my kids were going to this school, I would decide that they shouldn’t be going to that school.”
Joseph Kardash, the school’s superintendent, said his students don’t need the $125,000 the landfill donates each year, either.
“That’s not a decision factor,” Kardash said. “The school is there, it’s our job to educate kids and keep them safe. If they close the dump, it certainly doesn’t hurt the school. I’ll throw the party.”
In response to concerns about hydrogen sulfide in the air around the landfill -- a smell described as rotten eggs, produced by decomposing gypsum drywall -- the DEC installed four monitors around the school property. The results, posted publicly on the school district’s website, show numerous occasions of hydrogen sulfide levels exceeding levels considered acceptable by New York State.
The levels were especially high in the month of July, with one reading coming close to 70 parts per billion -- the DEC’s acceptable standard is 10 parts per billion. The New York Department of Health acknowledges unpleasant odors are detectable to individuals at 0.5 parts per billion, and that there is “limited information on the effects of long-term exposure to low levels of hydrogen sulfide.”
The DEC actively monitors these results and works to correct elevated hydrogen sulfide emissions to ensure that the public health and environment are protected, according to the agency.
The effort to get the landfill closed has a strong ally in Judith Enck. She was in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2, which includes New York and New Jersey, for almost the entire Obama presidency. Before that, she worked for two New York governors, overseeing environmental policy.
“This is environmental regulation 101,” Enck said. “ If you cannot regulate a large construction/demolition debris in a residential neighborhood next to a school, you’re incapable of regulating almost anything. How did the administration of Andrew Cuomo think that this was not going to face problems and it would not affect the health of residents and school kids?”
Enck says DEC is operating in bad faith when they declare the landfill is completely safe, and that it’s no coincidence that the landfill was approved in a town like Rensselaer, a working class town where about half of the population receives some sort of public assistance.
“If this was Scarsdale, or Mamaroneck, or Bedford Hills, you never would have seen this regulatory failure that the people of Rensselaer are dealing with,” Enck said.
The landfill’s problems span beyond the school to the entire community. The landfill’s permit allows for 100 semi-trucks to go in and out of the city on residential streets. Residents say that every weekday morning beginning around 6:30, the trucks spew dust and diesel fumes and are so loud they rattle the walls of their houses. Lou Sebesta, a retired forester with DEC, lives on Partition Street, the main truck route into and out of the landfill. From his front yard, to the west you can see the Albany skyline, to the east, the landfill.
“It’s like a war zone,” said Sebesta, yelling over the din of trucks on a late November morning.
A truck driving west on Partition Street in Rensselaer, leaving the Dunn landfill (visible in background). Photo: Chris Polansky
Sebesta pointed out a number of trucks without covers, despite the landfill’s permit requiring the trucks to be covered, to prevent any dust or debris from shaking loose. He said it’s par for the course. Beyond just the loss of peace and quiet, and his health concerns, Lou’s also anxious about property values. Last year he filed a tax grievance with the city, citing the landfill odors and truck traffic. Rensselaer chopped about 20% off his property tax bill.
Despite petitions, public outcry, and countless letters to the editor in the local papers, DEC maintains that the landfill is safe, and that they’re diligent in regulating it. Boosters in Rensselaer, like the outgoing mayor, Rich Mooney, point out that the landfill brings the city close to a million dollars in revenue. But for mayor-elect Mike Stammel, a Republican who ran on a firm anti-landfill platform, it shouldn’t be about that money.
“Are you gonna put revenue ahead of public health?” Stammel said. “I don’t think that’s the way we’re supposed to work. I’m going to use every tool that I can find in order to have the DEC move in onto this and try to close it.” Stammel pointed out that though DEC occasionally fines the landfill for some violations, that money doesn’t dissuade the landfill operator -- and it doesn’t do anything to help people in Rensselaer. “They get these minimal fees at $20,000, $15,000, that the DEC is fining this dump,” Stammel said. “Ask the people what they want, because we’re not getting any of that money, it’s going right to DEC.”
Assemblyman John McDonald, who represents the area in the State Assembly, said he’s in talks with Stammel about the landfill. “Like anything else in government,” McDonald said, “there’s room for improvement.” McDonald said he believes the DEC is acting “aggressively” against the landfill operator, while also acknowledging that, “I don’t think I could ever have total confidence in any agency.”
Stammel, who publicly opposed the opening of the landfill in 2012 as a Rensselaer County legislator, said he wants to work with state lawmakers to ensure DEC does not renew the landfill’s permit when it’s up in 2022.
Lou Sebesta, a retired DEC employee, claims the landfill has worsened his health and lowered the property value of his home. Photo: Chris Polansky
But Enck is not impressed.
“Once they do issue permits, they need to show up and do their job,” she said of DEC. “They need to inspect. They need to do far more sampling and monitoring. They also need to talk to the public.”
DEC Oversight
At minimum each landfill is inspected by DEC two times a year, according to the agency. The results are only available to the public if they file an open records request, which can take months to fulfill. Landfills that have been issued a violation -- like at Dunn -- or that are undergoing a major change -- like an expansion -- are inspected more frequently.
When an inspector goes to a landfill they fill out forms with a standardized set of things to review like if the landfill is preventing waste from entering the water or if it’s keeping adequate records and daily logs. There is also a place for the inspector to note whether the inspection is a result of a complaint reported by a community member, a follow up due to a violation, or a routine inspection to ensure that the landfill is meeting all of the requirements set under its permit -- which are issued by DEC.
“DEC continues to work closely with communities to respond to violations if they arise and when violations do occur, DEC takes action to hold the violators accountable and adjusts permit conditions or requires other protections needed to ensure concerns are addressed,” the DEC wrote to the NYC News Service.
The NYC News Services submitted more than thirty requests to the DEC and to counties and towns where landfills are located, asking for all violations related to landfills in New York State. The Department of Environmental Conversation has still not fulfilled any requests for the documents.
When landfills are inspected, state officials examine whether barriers work to prevent waste from seeping into groundwater and drinking water. They check if measures are undertaken to minimize dust from blowing into the surrounding community, steps are done to reduce pathogens that could cause disease, and that monitoring is conducted to spot problems.
Rich Ostrov, an environmental attorney at the law firm Young Summer, who previously worked for DEC and the US Environmental Protection Agency, said some landfills have on-site environmental workers who monitor the landfill, making regular inspections unnecessary.
“It depends on the nature of the landfill,” Ostrov said. “It depends on activities there.”
In addition, each landfill must submit an annual report to the DEC detailing monitoring results.
Landfills are also regulated differently depending on the kind of waste that can be dumped there. Construction and demolition landfills like Dunn do not take in trash from households. Instead, household trash goes to a municipal solid waste landfill. Every landfill is licensed for taking in a particular category of waste, and some can handle more than one kind of waste if they are processed in different parts of the facility.
Lockwood Hills
Lockwood Hills landfill adjacent to Seneca Lake in Yates County, New York. The landfill discharges its leachate into the Keuka Outlet (top right). Water within a one mile radius of the outlet’s mouth is not drinkable per the DEC. Source: Google Earth Pro
About an hour’s drive northwest of Ithaca, in rural Yates County, the owners of the Lockwood Hills landfill, Lockwood Hills LLC, have been updating its groundwater monitoring system since it received a violation in 2015.
State inspectors found that in the water that mixes with the landfill waste -- known in the industry as leachate -- that there were higher than acceptable quantities of boron, sulfate, sodium and magnesium, and to a lesser degree arsenic, selenium and chloride, according to Lockwood Hills’ 2018 annual report.
At high levels, these chemicals can cause a range of adverse health effects such as vomiting, diarrhea, and heart arrhythmias.
Leachate occurs from rain blending with waste, and landfills are supposed to be designed to minimize, process and manage leachate. When parts of this system fails, leachate can run off into ground and surface water.
Lockwood Hills’ spent approximately four years working on updating its system. The work was finished in October, according to the DEC. The agency expects a final engineering certification associated with the work to be submitted in April 2020. To this day, community members worry their drinking water has been jeopardized.
Lockwood Hills discharges its leachate into the Keuka Outlet, a river that flows into Seneca Lake. Under DEC oversight, landfills are allowed to discharge leachate into lakes or streams as long as it is diluted with enough water. Concerned citizens have called for DEC to revoke Lockwood’s permit to discharge leachate.
In an email obtained by the NYC News Service, Alyssa Arcaya -- who at the time was acting chief of the national pollutant discharge elimination system for the EPA and is now chief of the clean water regulatory branch of the agency -- recommended that Lockwood Hill’s permit be fully reviewed before being reissued, and DEC agreed to it.
Permits to discharge waste are issued to landfills by DEC. As long as the landfill owner submits an application to renew a permit, the landfill can continue operating while the DEC evaluates the application.
This can take years, according to Karl Coplan, a law professor at Pace University. Landfills operating in this limbo between permits have been dubbed “zombie landfills,” or “zombie permits.”
This has been the case at Lockwood Hills. DEC confirmed that three other landfills in New York State are also operating under expired permits. It emphasized that this is allowed under state law.
“That is something that DEC frequently does to the frustration, I will say, of activists,” said Rachel Treichler an environmental lawyer who has represented a number of environmental groups in lawsuits against landfills and DEC, including at the Hakes landfill.
“The Lockwood Hills situation is an illustration of the problems that can arise when you’re allowing entities to continue under an old permit when many new contingencies have been identified that aren’t addressed in the permit,” she said.
New issues such as a landfill wanting to expand or receiving a violation arise all the time that needs to be addressed in new permits. Treichler also noted that research and environmental impact statements can give new information about the dangers of certain chemicals, for example. When new permits aren’t issued in a timely manner those issues don’t get addressed and the landfill continues to operate under the standards of the old permit.
Because New York State only requires landfills to submit an application for a new permit to be submitted to keep operating, it makes it possible for the landfill to remain in this state of limbo, as the DEC is under no time constraint to act.
“They’re like the walking dead when it comes to environmental permits,” Coplan said, who has researched the effects of zombie permits. “They had an expiration date, they were supposed to die after five years but they’re wreaking havoc around the country side by allowing pollution that shouldn’t be allowed to continue long after their life is over.”
While the EPA acknowledges that Lockwood Hill’s permit needs to be updated they say that the landfill has a right to continue operating.
“Under federal and state regulations, it is permissible for the Lockwood facility to continue to operate under its current permit until a new permit is issued,” the EPA told NYC News Service. The agency said it is working with DEC on Lockwood Hills ”to ensure that human health and the environment are protected.”
Linda Downs bought her home near Seneca Lake in 2007 and moved there with her husband in 2015. Seneca Lake surface water is the only source of drinking water for people living in the area. They have no municipal water.
When she bought her house, Downs was aware that the drinking water in that area of the lake was subpar to the rest of the lake but she was told by simply treating the water with a UV light would make the water drinkable. Some people on her street drink the water, but she does not.
"The issue is the Keuka Outlet.” Downs said. “The landfill is part of it. There are a lot of factors." The DEC has acknowledged that water within one mile of the Keuka Outlet mouth is not drinkable.
She has spent about $9,000 digging a new water line and putting filters as well as purchasing other equipment needed to clean the water enough so she can shower and brush her teeth with it. She spends hundreds of dollars every year to update and maintain her system.
“We didn’t know any of this when bought our property,” Downs said. “We’re holding out for municipal water, but it takes forever.”
In a statement to NYC News Service Michael McKeon, a spokesperson for Lockwood Hills said: “We take our responsibilities as environmental stewards seriously, and that includes addressing the issues at Lockwood. As part of our commitment to meet high environmental standards, the consent order work at Lockwood has been completed, which included upgrading the leachate treatment system and installing a new liner at a cost of over $1 million. We continue to adhere to or exceed the environmental standards for all of our state and federal permits.”
Lawsuits
In some cases, a landfill may not be issued a violation by the DEC, despite concerns from the public that practices at the facilities are endangering the environment. This leaves community members and activists with little choice but to file a lawsuit. In a review of public records, the landfill waste management service, Casella, which owns and operates multiple landfills across the northeast, including five in New York, has been sued a number of times in the past four years, including for environmental-related damages.
In one lawsuit, in 2015, residents living near the Southbridge Recycling and Disposal Park in Massachusetts alleged the landfill was contaminating the groundwater and claimed that the Casella-owned facility had violated the Clean Water Act.
The case was eventually settled and Casella agreed to close the landfill, pick up the tab for the approximate $8-$9 million of water contamination related-damages and offered free waste collection for residents through March 2024, as part of the settlement. They will also pay up to $5 million for the construction of a waterline in the neighborhood of the contaminated water wells.
Hakes
Growing up in the area of Painted Post, part of the town of Campbell, New York, John Culver used to go squirrel hunting on the lowest part of the mountain. He never imagined that 60 years later, that area would become the most elevated part of the mountain because of a large landfill.
The Hakes landfill sits 15 miles from the Pennsylvania border. For more than two decades, it has been run by Casella.
While New York State has rejected fracking as a way to extract oil and gas, Pennsylvania has embraced the industry -- and some drilling sites are sending their waste across state lines to New York landfills.
Hakes is one of the few New York landfills taking in “drill cuttings” -- rocks that have been chewed up as part of drilling boreholes for wells, Pennsylvania public records show.
Hakes is one of the largest recipient of fracking waste in the state. Annual reports from Hakes show that in some years, 45 percent of the waste going into the landfill were drill cuttings from fracking. The rest is construction and demolition detritus, including sheetrock and lead pipes.
Now the landfill is set to expand. Without that expansion, public records show, the landfill would be at capacity before the summer of 2020. The town of Campbell voted 5-0 in March to allow the landfill to expand from approximately 58 acres to about 79 acres, according to meeting minutes.
Campbell residents have raised concerns about the rocks going to the dump. While they do not contain the kinds of hazardous chemicals and other substances that are part of the later stages of fracking, they do emit low levels of radiation from radon that comes from the rocks that are naturally from that region of Pennsylvania.
Environmental activists are concerned about the levels of radiation from the rocks that are already in the landfill, and their concerns are growing as additional drill cuttings from the Marcellus shale, the kind of stone in the region, will add to those emissions. The shale has naturally occurring radioactive material, according to experts and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Hakes Landfill expansion from 1984 to 2018. Source: Google Earth
The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in April 2019 alleging that DEC did not take into consideration the radiation produced by fracking material when they conducted their final environmental impact Statement before the expansion was approved by the town. The lawsuit was stalled as the parties waited for DEC to issue a permit to Hakes, approving the expansion. The DEC, Treichler said, was going to issue permits before Thanksgiving. Instead the permit was issued on December 19, 2019, according to DEC.
“This has proceeded unusually because of the permits,” Treichler said. “Permits would’ve been issued before the final environmental impact statement.”
Once the permits are issued, Treichler and the Sierra Club intend to refile the lawsuit, asking the town and DEC to request additional testing for radioactive materials.
David Carpenter, a former radiology doctor who worked for the NY Department of Health who has consulted the plaintiffs in the litigation, said radiation from the rocks is not being monitored properly by the landfill, its managers and DEC.
The drill cuttings at Hakes are not radioactive, according to DEC. Rather, it is considered solid waste and the radioactivity they emit is similar to the background environment.
“My colleagues were very concerned that they were grossly underestimating the amount of radon that was coming off the land,” Carpenter said. “The issue at Hakes was DEC regulates that but they were using methods for monitoring the radon concentration that were just not adequate.”
As radium decays, it releases radon, a gas, that blends easily with groundwater and rain runoff. “We’re concerned they’re [the DEC] grossly underestimating the radon that is released. They’re not working to protect the health of the public under those circumstances,” according to Carpenter.
Treichler says DEC has proposed in the past year to stop requiring testing for radon byproducts, like radium, in the landfill water runoff. But at Hakes and the Chemung County Landfill, 20 miles from Hakes and also operated by Casella, have had reports of byproducts being found in the waste.
In addition, a creek passes near the landfill and a pond designed to catch overflowing contaminated water from the landfill. Nearby residents are concerned about the health dangers from radiation in the air and water, and the threat to people living downstream and downwind of the landfill, according to the lawsuit.
Casella held an open house recently so residents in the area could tour the landfill and learn about what’s being done inside. Wayne Cosier, who lives nearby, was in attendance. He said the landfill employees took the group up to the dump’s highest point. From there, he could see all of Steuben County.
“If it was a natural hill, it would be pretty,” he said. “But then you think about all the stuff that’s underneath you.”
He recalled seeing water from the landfill overflowing into the creek.
“When it rains all day, the overflow pond overflows, and goes directly into the creek” said Cosier.
Ponds are a part of a landfill that collect rainwater and prevent it from entering a landfill. Ponds can also collect rainwater that has entered the landfill and mixed with waste that may be contaminated. Cosier, who lives less than a mile away from the landfill, has never seen a health warning from DEC and worries about radon contamination to the groundwater and creek.
DEC works in coordination with the Department of Health to notify the public of potential health impacts, but that these situations are rare, according to the agency.
DEC has rejected the complaints. In its 2018 environmental impact statement, it contends the residents have a misunderstanding of what is contained in the fracking materials coming into the landfill. It stated the drill cuttings contain very little Marcellus shale and has very low levels of radium, minimizing any danger from radiation.
In order to monitor the drill cuttings emitting radiation, Hakes has detectors set up that work well, according to the agency.
As proof, the agency pointed to an incident in 2016 when its detectors helped spot high levels of radiation from an old ship marker; a glow-in-the-dark radium indicator designed to help prevent sailors from misstepping on a deck in the dark.
The landfill refused the entire demolition load until the radioactive material could be found. Experts came in and found the ship marker among the trash and it was disposed of at a site that processes radioactive waste. Only then was the rest of the demolition load accepted at Hakes.
Meanwhile, the DEC said that since the area around Campbell is the same kind of rock as in Pennsylvania, there is naturally occurring radon in the region, and the fracking waste coming into the adds too little to pose a new danger.
“Considering there is significantly more volume of native soils and materials in the landfill than drill cuttings, the contribution from the drill cuttings, none of which have triggered the radiation portal monitor, is likely negligible,” according to the agency.
Casella has not responded to requests for comment.
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