New York State's Landfill Problem

Link to original story: https://oliviaraimonde.wixsite.com/website-1/post/new-york-state-s-landfill-problem

Note: Below are the parts that I worked on. This was a reported project with two other reporters who are now at Bloomberg and Oklahoma Public Radio.

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 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.