Editor’s note: This commentary is by Beth Barnes, of Newport, who is a member of DUMP, Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity. She moved to the Northeast Kingdom six years ago from Southern California and has been an environmental advocate for over 20 years.
Measuring 124 feet and 11 stories high, Decker Towers in Burlington is the tallest building in the entire state of Vermont, according to Wikipedia. Measuring 5 feet 4 inches tall, I am the tallest person in my household, but — full disclosure — my household consists of me and two cats! The Eiffel Tower in Paris looms above this beautiful French city at 984 feet. To put things in perspective and to give the reader a sense of scale, Mount Casella (aka: Vermont’s only landfill) currently measures just 10 feet shorter than this French icon. Move over Paris because if the 51-acre landfill expansion is allowed to proceed, Mount Casella is slated to reach over 1,050 feet tall. That would be a little over eight Decker Towers and over 200 of me! The pyramids at Giza just outside of Cairo, Egypt, measure 455 feet tall, so even two on top of each other would fall well short of our very own Mount Casella.
You may think I’m talking trash. I am! This is not a mountain made by nature, this is a mountain made from trash. The trash, including demolition and construction waste is trucked into Coventry from all over Vermont and New England. These trucks make over 100 trips per day emitting enormous amounts of CO2 and they stress our country roads and disrupt idyllic Vermont life as we know it. The state of Vermont has approved a 51-acre expansion so that “we” can accept even more trash over the next 20 years, including more trips by these polluting trucks and more trash on our growing mountain. This is a classic, time-tested case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind and again, the Northeast Kingdom is the ideal place to locate everything the rest of the state does not want. We are cautioned never to put all of our eggs into one basket, so why do we continue to put all the state’s trash in one?
Expanding the only remaining landfill in Vermont for the next 20 years is not the answer. Approval of bigger landfills, business-as-usual, provides greater profits for shareholders and erases any incentive to find alternative solutions like recycling and reduction of the trash stream. When a few non-locals benefit financially while an already underserved Orleans County is left with trash, the social injustice leaves no room, or incentive, for collaboration. We should be moving forward together to find answers that benefit everyone.
Mr. Casella, do we really need a bigger trash mountain in the beautiful and pristine Northeast Kingdom, let alone on the shores of an international lake that provides drinking water to over 185,000 Canadians? Our beautiful waters have also been a playground for generations of Northeast Kingdom families. Lake Memphremagog draws visitors from around the globe in all four seasons, but trouble looms with the threat of emerging contaminants like PFAS and PFOAs poisoning Vermont waterways. The landfill may be located in Coventry but the toxic leachate, a persistent by-product of all landfills, active or not, is trucked to municipal wastewater treatment facilities that discharge into waterways leading to Lake Champlain too. Even though the treated water emerges “clear,” do not be fooled, Vermont. Municipal wastewater treatment facilities are designed for domestic organic sewage and are incapable of treating these emerging, toxic and “forever chemicals” that are being found in leachate, or garbage juice. We are told that emerging chemicals are being treated “out” of the leachate and the clear water after treatment is proof. Clear water is nothing more than deception because these emerging chemicals cannot be treated out at a wastewater treatment facility. Imagine pouring table salt into a glass of water — the water remains clear and the salt seems to disappear, but has it?
The smell of methane and trash is often prevalent and hard to stomach and hard to explain to NEK visitors, in fact impossible to explain to anyone, let alone live with. We need to cherish our lake, our air, our roads, our environment and all Vermonters.
Mount Casella would be the perfect outdoor playground, if it were real, because it boasts an indescribably beautiful panoramic view of the Northeast Kingdom and beyond. Recently, the NEK was featured in the November 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine for its quirkiness and beauty, not because it is home to Vermont’s only behemoth landfill. In 2006 the NEK premiered a National Geographic geo-tourism map that is one of the first of its kind in the world. A geo-tourism map promotes distinctive experiences in an area defined as “tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of residents.”
If this landfill expands as planned, there will be no geo-tourism “character” left. Our unspoiled environment will be destroyed. The beautiful aesthetics will have given way to a lingering stench. Our unique heritage will have succumbed to profit mongers of all description. The well-being of NEK residents will continue to be threatened forever because we live with the trash, and those who send it do not. This is an unacceptable and dangerous scenario and we can stand up to expansion with our voices, our votes and our vigilance. Let’s find a way forward through collaboration and innovation, because if the expansion is approved, it will catapult the height to around 1,050 feet of trash. According to the 2017 population count for Coventry, home of Mount Casella, the number of residents in the shadows of this trash mountain was 1,051. This is one foot of trash for every resident of Coventry.
A growing mountain of trash in our backyard will threaten our NEK lifestyle and possibly change the lake forever. The groundswell has begun and we invite all Vermonters to join us because we are in this together. DUMP, Don’t Undermine Mephremagog’s Purity, is an international grassroots movement and we are speaking out. Please join us as we fight for answers, solutions, social justice and a clean environment. Sign our petition at nolakedump.com and contact us at nolakedump@gmail.com to see how you can help.
