Editor’s note: This commentary is by Henry Coe of Danville and Chris Jacobs of Albany. Coe’s testimony to the Agency of Natural Resources follows.
The owner of the Coventry Landfill is applying to Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources for an expansion by 51 acres and the permit to dump waste for 22 years.
All other Vermont landfills have closed. In addition to all of Vermont’s garbage, an increasing proportion of Coventry Landfill waste comes from contaminated sources from out of state. No samples of waste are required to be taken from trucks before they are dumped. Who really knows what is in Coventry’s pits?
Landfill plastic liners eventually leak. Poisonous leachate will pollute groundwater and surface water in the wetlands at the edge of Coventry Landfill. The Black River, South Bay and Lake Memphremagog, which is the drinking water source for 150,000 of our Canadian neighbors, will become polluted. Pristine waters are a resource to be treasured. They are vanishing even in Vermont. One does not dump garbage in or near a lake. The Coventry site was the wrong location 60 years ago. It is the wrong location now.
The facility has four years of existing capacity. What is the hurry to nearly double its size? The state should delay the permit to expand while it establishes a decentralized plan for each county or groups of counties to implement the universal recycling law and to reduce waste through recycling and composting.
Are we OK with this? Your voice is important and can still be heard until the end of the state’s comment period, July 20. This is our last chance to object for 22 years. Write to oppose the expansion request, to delay it, or to attach strict conditions about foul odor, heavy truck traffic on secondary roads, or for required samples to be taken and lab tested by a state employee, from every truckload of garbage before dumping. Voice your own concerns and questions in an email to the Agency of Natural Resources official coordinating this permit application.
Jeff.Bourdeau@vermont.gov
The following is Henry Coe’s testimony submitted to the Agency of Natural Resources on July 2.
[M]y name is Henry Coe, an ordinary resident of the Northeast Kingdom for over 50 years, father of three sons and seven grandchildren who live nearby. I come here today as a citizen and because I care greatly for our area, for its future, and for our neighbors which include thousands of friends immediately north of our Canadian border.
I used to dump my trash in old Charlie Nadeau’s dump in the ’60s. Instinctively, as a young man, I felt I was polluting the water running in the Black River to Lake Memphremagog. In those days, Charlie had three, loosely related businesses — a stock car racing track, a junk yard and a dump.
Over the years, Charlie was forced to close the wrong businesses, the racetrack and the junkyard, which were relatively benign. The worst of the lot, the dump was allowed to stay, kind of grandfathered in. Originally located at the edge of the extensive wetland east of the Black River, close by where it enters South Bay, Lake Memphremagog, the dump was sold and then resold to Casella Waste Management. Over the period Casella has owned and operated this landfill facility, it has migrated, cell by cell up the slope from the original old dump.
Has the general location changed? No. Has the volume of waste changed? Yes. Have the sources and kind changed? Yes.
Our area now receives waste, including waste from contaminated sources, from all over the state of Vermont as well as from other states. Our Northeast Kingdom has become the weak link in the landfill waste chain. Our state government has granted a franchise to a profit-making corporation to receive this waste generated elsewhere, almost guaranteed to pollute our waters and pound our roads.
Dozens of truckloads of solid waste north, each week, truckloads of poisonous leachate south. It was the wrong micro location then; it is the wrong micro and statewide location now. Are we so foolish as to believe the language in this application that these synthetic landfill liners are “permanent”? Will not they leak into our groundwater and into our international lake? Last I knew, nothing is forever.
In thinking about this request for a 51-acre extension and an additional 10 permitted years to operate what has now become the state’s only statewide solid waste landfill, I find it ironic and perplexing that Vermont’s health and safety rules and regulations are more stringent for the individual citizen and household than for a large corporation. Three examples come to mind:
• Vermont will soon be operating under a universal recycling law which requires individual households to compost. This is good. The application makes little mention of this law. The owner of the Coventry landfill, who lobbied against this law, requests to operate as before according to the application. Business as usual. No procedures are proposed to test contents of incoming trucks, load by load for organics, recyclables or contaminated/hazardous waste. Vermont takes the word of the company as to what each truck brings in, by periodic review of the operator’s books. No state employee is on scene full time, no state lab on scene, fox guarding the chicken coop. There is also a veiled threat, saying that these trucks may be periodically inspected by another party. I have heard of only one instance of that — once when the FBI was searching for a couple of dead bodies. We are all familiar with simple soil sample augers which I am sure can be modified and automated for required multiple samples to be taken from each truck load prior to unloading. The lab sample should be identified as to source, lab tested on site, and approved before any solid waste material can be unloaded. This should be mandatory and made a condition for continued operation of this facility.
• When farmers send milk from farm to processing plant, the trucker, before turning the hose valve from bulk tank to truck, first takes a sample from the bulk tank, places it in a small lab jar identified as to farm, puts it into a refrigerated container inside his cab. He then empties the farmer’s bulk tank contents into his tanker truck. Repeats process for each farm’s milk he picks up. Before he unloads at the Cabot or Hood receiving plants, each lab sample is tested. And samples are taken of the full load.
If the lab results pass, the trunk contents are unloaded and used. If a sample fails the lab test, further tests are done on the full load, and if found diluted sufficiently to pass the standard, the contents are used. Authority exists to destroy the full contents of the tanker truck for loads not meeting health standards. There is a lab record for each farm. Offending farms are liable for damages.
• Vermont residents, when building a new house, must pass a soils perc test, and increasingly are required to build an elaborate mound system. No permit is approved and given, until a back-up area is found and reserved, in case of a leach field failure. This is an expensive process for a young family.
Does our Department of Environmental Conservation hold landfill operators to the same standard? I stand to be corrected, but not to my knowledge. In the event of failure of the Coventry landfill, where is the required backup in the rest of the state? To my knowledge, there is none. Coventry is the only remaining game in Vermont. What happened to the rest? What is the definition of failure of a landfill? Is there a definition? Presumably all other landfills have failed. By default Coventry has become Vermont’s only remaining backup. This represents a failure of state solid waste planning.
As far as I can see, by reading the application, if one cell fails, waste deposits shall be stopped there and put into a new cell . No word is given on how that failure (presumably groundwater and/or surface water contamination due to cuts and holes in the bottom liner) is to be mitigated. Is each cell, those that fail, and those that potentially may fail, always accessible for mitigation and repair? Even those now surrounded by other cells? Please explain.
The reality is that the state of Vermont has had no long-range planning for regional and statewide solid waste disposal. Its policy has been disjointed and incremental. If one accepts that a single mega-operation is found best, it logically would be located in a central location of higher volume, like Montpelier, or even a Woodstock, Hartford or Burlington, saving millions in trucking and road maintenance costs.
Instead the state has been reactive. To a historically bad location, grandfathered in, within the Northeast Kingdom where there is little money and little political clout to defend against it. The historic dump in Coventry was a bad location then. It is an equally bad location now, perched as it is above an international potable water source for thousands of our Quebec neighbors, in Magog and Sherbrooke, whose population is three times the size of Burlington’s. Common sense says you don’t place and outhouse above a potable spring. Most Vermonters know this.
Any application for a new facility elsewhere in the state would not be permitted to locate within, and at the edge of a designated wetland and at the headwater of a major potable water source. We now see for the first time, in the fourth paragraph of the first page of the application to expand, a variance was granted by the state in November 2016, allowing the applicant to encroach into the 300-foot buffer regulation of a designated wetland. Was the public warned? Were public hearings held on the variance request? Please document. Again, stricter regulations are placed upon the individual owner of a woodlot under the Current Use regulations than for a corporate entity. To my knowledge, areas designated as “Ecologically Sensitive Treatment Areas” (ESTAs), are not subject to variance and require that no manmade disturbance occur in such areas. Landowners respect this. This wetland in Coventry, adjacent to the facility should be treated with no less protection and care.
Should not the goal of the state of Vermont, and for all of us, be the ability to recycle more than we dump? Complementary to that is the need of landfills to remediate – (remove, sort, recycle, and sell materials). If we meet these goals — one ton in, one ton out — as should be required, then there is no need to expand this facility and to further endanger our Canadian friends and our own environment.
Four years of permitted capacity, at current usage rates, still exists in the Coventry facility. What is the hurry? The state, in its obligation to serve the public interest needs to be proactive. Develop a comprehensive statewide comprehensive solid waste disposal plan, including implementation. The state needs question the assumption that landfill liners are forever. It needs to coordinate plans with the objectives of Vermont’s universal recycling law. It needs to assess population trends. It needs to be conservative and sensitive when permitting development adjacent to wetland areas and at the headwaters of a potable water supply affecting a large population. These considerations, undertaken with proper proactive planning, would demonstrate that the present Coventry landfill site is definitely the wrong location to receive additional solid waste until 2035. Take advantage of this four-year opportunity now.
I urge you to disapprove of this application both to expand acreage and to extend the permit period.
