Casella Waste Systems, Inc., the largest waste management company in the state, will not complete its purchase of the Grow Compost facility in Moretown because of permitting challenges.
“We can’t permit a facility on that property, so we’re not going to buy that property,” said Joe Fusco, vice president at Casella. “But we’re going to find a place in the meantime for people that continue to be able to drop off. This is not happening tomorrow.”
Casella bought the Grow Compost business and collections operation a year ago in an effort to expand its compost services to customers around the state, and to help it comply with Act 148, Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law, which banned food scraps from the landfill starting July 1, 2020.
Officials at Casella had planned to purchase the facility, too, but with a contingency to back out if they were unable to obtain the necessary permits, according to Fusco.
Compost is still being collected at the facility and transported elsewhere for processing, Fusco said.
Regulations for composting facilities changed in 2012, and again in 2020, according to Ben Gauthier, an environmental analyst with the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Waste Management and Prevention Division. The Moretown facility had been grandfathered in and didn’t need to comply with certain aspects of the latest rules.
However, to continue to operate it, Casella would have needed to create a system to manage leachate, according to Gauthier, who walked the Grow Compost property on a site visit with staff from Casella in June. That would involve either building collection and treatment systems on site or transporting leachate to a separate wastewater treatment facility. Both options are expensive.
In addition, several houses with private drinking water wells are positioned directly downgradient from the facility, Gauthier said, and Casella would have needed to comply with setbacks for the wells.
“They’d have to be so far back from the property line, and so far back from the wells, that they lost a lot of the functional area of the site,” he said.
Fusco said he isn’t sure what will happen to the property. Casella is looking for another location so it can continue to expand compost offerings to its customers. The company owns other composting and food depackaging facilities in the state.
Casella had lagged on rural compost pickup, part of its obligation under Act 148. Asked whether the company had since expanded its services, Fusco pointed to upgrades to the company’s Bennington compost facility, Long Trail Compost, and its purchase of Grow Compost.
“Obviously, the acquisition of the Grow Compost business was a significant step forward for us in growing our collection network,” Fusco said.
