This commentary is by Peggy Stevens of Charleston on behalf of the DUMP Advisory Committee.
Recent news that DUMP, Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity, has been joined by the Conservation Law Foundation and Vermont Natural Resources Council in its appeal of a wrongful decision by the Agency of Natural Resources has raised the bar in the ongoing effort to protect the Memphremagog watershed from landfill contamination.
Both the Conservation Law Foundation and the Natural Resources Council are respected environmental protection organizations. Their support for DUMP’s legal effort lends greater weight and adds momentum to the fight to stop further expansion of the Coventry landfill, Vermont’s only operating landfill and arguably one of the worst-sited landfills in the nation, by permitting a pilot leachate treatment project to be built on site.
The decision by Gov. Scott’s secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, Julie Moore, not to require a federal National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, required by the Federal Clean Water Act for any point source of pollution, is in direct violation of a law designed to protect the health and safety of our environment and the people who live here.
According to the EPA, “If you discharge from a point source into the waters of the United States, you need an NPDES permit.”
At issue is the point source, a pipe from what is called Underdrain 3 (UD3) in the landfill, which discharges 4,000 to 13,000 gallons a day of contaminated “groundwater” into the wetlands bordering the Black River, which flows directly into Lake Memphremagog.
That discharge contains exceedances of toxic “forever” PFAS chemicals, arsenic and cadmium, all cancer-causing and all of which accumulate in the water and do not go away.
Discharges from other underdrains are collected and trucked out of the Memphremagog watershed for disposal via wastewater treatment plants in Montpelier and Plattsburgh, New York, into the Winooski River and Lake Champlain. But not UD3, which has been allowed by Secretary Moore to pour its poison into the wetlands instead of being collected as leachate.
Claims that it is not leachate are a joke when measurable levels of poisons exceeding safe levels of exposure are present.
NEWSVT (New England Waste Services of Vermont) would have intelligent people believe that DUMP is the problem, that DUMP is sowing confusion and standing in the way of environmental protection. Nothing could be further from the truth. DUMP is “sowing” facts NEWSVT would prefer to keep from the public.
Of course, any discharge from the landfill must be scrubbed of toxic pollutants before being disposed of into our Vermont environment! That has never been in question. The problem is that Secretary Moore, with the governor’s blessing, has basically handed over all decision-making to the landfill owner operator, NEWSVT, including eliminating requirements to comply with EPA standards and permits that are designed to protect the environment.
If Coventry NEWSVT is allowed to build a “pilot” treatment facility on this ecologically fragile site, the way will be wide open to build a permanent facility on site that will likely, eventually, include importing millions of gallons of leachate from elsewhere in Vermont and out of state, increasing the threat to our Northeast Kingdom watershed.
We in the NEK contribute 7% of the tons of solid waste dumped annually on Coventry landfill. The rest of the state contributes 73%, and 20% — up to 120,000 tons annually — is imported, mostly contaminated, solid waste. That solid waste generates millions of gallons of leachate annually. Why must we also be the “outhouse” into which this waste is disposed?
Concerns about present contamination are raised by the 25% to 40% of brown bullhead fish with cancerous lesions found nowhere else in Vermont and only ever in environmentally contaminated waters.
If our Lake Memphremagog (a drinking water reservoir for 175,000 Quebec neighbor, as well as habitat for our fish and wildlife and recreational resource and economic base of our region) is to be protected from further contamination, all landfill discharges should be collected and trucked to and treated where the garbage that generated it comes from — downstate. Why not near the Montpelier wastewater treatment facility that willingly accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to dispose of leachate?
And only if the state of Vermont owns and operates that leachate treatment facility will we be able to ban the potential import of toxic out-of-state leachate. The same goes for solid waste disposal facilities.
Legally, as long as the facility is privately owned, Vermont has no control over what is imported into the state. Maine has taken action to reverse this injustice. Why not Vermont?
The mission of DUMP is to protect the environment and ecosystem of the Memphremagog watershed from landfill pollution and expansion. Right now, there is an Act 250 moratorium on treatment and disposal of leachate anywhere in the Memphremagog watershed. That moratorium must become a permanent ban, and further expansion of the landfill and its infrastructure must also be banned, if environmental protection and justice for the health and safety of our NEK water resources are to be insured.
Water is life for our people, fish and wildlife, as well as for our regional NEK economy, which depends for its survival on the splendor and quality of our natural environment and water resources. We in the NEK and all of Vermont must stand together to protect what is ours. Further contamination of our precious and finite water resources will be irreversible.
