This commentary is by Bill Coleman of Newark, Vermont, who has worked in human services for more than 20 years and is vice chair of the Caledonia County Progressive Committee.
How many Vermonters are paying sufficiently close attention to what goes into their trash each time that we dispose of something?
More critically, are we thinking about the long distances that our trash travels aboard the very large fossil-fuel-emitting trucks that haul it away? Is thinking along the lines of “out of sight, out of mind” preventing us from being responsible? Do we know where our trash goes?
The only landfill in Vermont that still operates is located just a few miles from the Canadian border, in Coventry, and only a few hundred yards at the most from the shores of once-pristine Lake Memphremagog, which stretches 20 miles north into Quebec.
It is operated by NEWS (New England Waste Systems.) The operators are pocketing extraordinary profits each year from the over 100 large trucks that go rumbling up Interstate 91 each day. Many of these trucks arrive from Massachusetts, or from New York.
If this were a state or municipally owned landfill, it would be legal for the out-of-state trash to be refused, but according to the Interstate Commerce Clause, it must be accepted by the privately owned corporation that runs it.
It is licensed to receive up to 600,000 tons of solid waste each year. Only 6% of this is generated within the state’s Northeast Kingdom, while 70% arrives from the rest of Vermont.
We must create a system of regional landfills around the state in order for people to comprehend the implications of acting without regard for the discarding of high volumes of trash. Ideally there should be a small landfill in every county.
Isn’t this entire picture in total contrast to common-sense values such as environmental justice? The NEK is the most rural part of Vermont, and our legislative delegation is small in comparison to Chittenden County and other more populated areas that generate most of the trash.
At a recent informational presentation that I attended in Newport, we learned that the majority of the most highly toxic trash arriving in Coventry comes in from out of state in the form of asbestos and other particularly noxious carcinogens. We were informed that forever chemicals, known as PFAS, leach through the landfill liner and into the lake, where prevalence of certain species of fish who have cancerous lesions are even higher than in other bodies of water regarded as the most polluted waters in the United states, such as Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes.
It was explained just how extremely inadequate and dangerous Vermont’s water quality standards are in detection of PFAS.
This state needs to fast-track planning for a replacement landfill immediately. There is no excuse for the rest of Vermont to continue imposing this extraordinary load of carcinogens on our mostly rural NEK citizens, here in an area less known for activism, where fewer people are educated enough to comprehend the magnitude of the atrocities taking place each day.
What is going on in some cases must constitute corporate crime. Criminal charges should be considered against the operators, assuming that they are applicable. Extremely heavy fines must be levied against them as well. For more information, please visit nolakedump.org
Also please consider supporting litigation that is an ongoing expense for this fairly small group of volunteer citizen watchdogs by sending in whatever you can afford.
