This commentary is by Walter Medwid, a resident of Derby.
In vetoing the new bottle bill, Gov. Scott said this: “It’s like a Rube Goldberg approach to recycling. Think about all the processes and steps along the way when you have to recycle and redeem your deposits.”
What struck me was the concern about the expansion of the recycling program, one that appears to be both efficient and effective, yet the governor and his secretary of natural resources, Julie Moore, have fully endorsed a solid waste program that truly is an homage to Rube Goldberg.
Our official state program is to truck trash from all points in Vermont and several other states to Vermont’s only operating dump, located in Coventry in the far reaches of the Northeast Kingdom. Secretary Moore approved an expansion of the dump in 2018. 80% of Vermont’s trash ends up there, along with 20% from other states.
Upwards of 100 tractor-trailer loads daily travel Vermont roads on a journey that comes close to the Canadian border before returning home. We have state policy that discourages the use of fossil fuels and encourages reductions in greenhouse gases, but our solid waste operations fly in the face of those state goals.
True to Rube Goldberg, the leachate (aka garbage juice) collected from the dump is then trucked to Plattsburgh, New York, and Montpelier, where wastewater treatment plants process the leachate to some degree before it is released into the Winooski River and Lake Champlain.
The gallons trucked are no small amount — better sit down: Some 1 million gallons are trucked each month! That’s 167 tanker truck loads (6,000 gallon capacity) monthly.
To make matters worse, the dump is located in what can arguably vie for standing as America’s worst-sited dump. The dump is adjacent to Class II wetlands adjoining the Black River, which flows into Lake Memphremagog. Memphremagog is a public drinking water supply for some 175,000 Canadians and it’s also home to brown bullheads (catfish). When sampled by researchers, up to 40% of the fish have malignant melanomas — cause unknown.
On the day you read this commentary, between 4,000 and 13,000 gallons of pollution from the dump will pour into the wetlands and ultimately into Memphremagog. That effluent contains PFAS (forever chemicals), arsenic and cadmium.
A local group, Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity (DUMP — I serve on its advisory committee) sought to have Secretary Moore obtain a permit for the discharges but she refused and now the Conservation Law Foundation and Vermont Natural Resources Council have joined DUMP in the appeal of Moore’s head-scratching decision.
Vermont’s one and only operating dump is owned by Casella, a public corporation whose bottom-line obligations are to its stockholders. The dump operates as a monopoly. This administration has effectively turned the keys of the solid waste program over to a private corporation.
A quote from a Seven Days article from 2019 put it more bluntly: “It appears that Casella is very close to the governor,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. “I can’t think of a situation where the Scott administration has taken a position that is not in line with what Casella wants, recently.”
Time has since proven this to be on point. The governor, in comments regarding his vetoing the recycling bill, adopted this interesting rationale, as reported by WCAX: “Scott also says he’s concerned it could drive revenue away from the single-source system operated by Casella.”
We as a state have “solved” our solid waste challenge by creating a host of other assaults on our environment.
A legislative effort to examine our solid waste program never got traction this past session, perhaps because of the nine — count ’em, nine — lobbyists working for Casella in Vermont alone.
Vermont needs a regional system of addressing this crisis, such that the solutions don’t carry severe environmental consequences.
While we think of our state as an environmental leader, that concept has seriously eroded under this administration. As one distinguished colleague, who works on water protection issues, stated to me, “Vermont runs on the fumes of its past reputation for national leadership on environmental issues, among several other issues.”
Our flawed and outdated solid waste program is not the only current environmental travesty, unfortunately. We are losing 1,500 acres of Vermont forests annually, according to a UVM study; biologists at our Fish & Wildlife Department have identified nearly 1,000 species that are categorized as species in greatest conservation need — yet Gov. Scott and Secretary Moore have appointed two commissioners with no credentials in wildlife science to run the show — and all the while, the malignant melanoma-ridden bullheads found nowhere else in Vermont and only ever in environmentally contaminated waters ply Memphremagog waters.
Gov. Scott was elected at time when an ex-president was undermining and creating chaos within democratic institutions and norms, and Gov. Scott offered a calm approach and respect for democratic norms. It made sense for us to gravitate to a functional leader. We owe him for that leadership.
However our identity, our brand, is our environment and our landscape. That environment and landscape is how the world knows us, but these have suffered dearly under this administration.
A boondoggle of a solid waste program demands that we up our game and return to a status of being a national leader. We shouldn’t be running on the fumes of our past reputation.
