This commentary is by Henry Coe of Danville, Effie Brown of Derby and Walter Medwid of Derby, volunteer members of Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity, also known as DUMP.
No sugarmaker would operate his boiling rig without attending it. Yet Casella Waste Systems, multibillion-dollar owner of the Coventry landfill, failed to be precautionary when it understaffed an unpermitted experimental leachate treatment project, resulting in the Feb. 24 accidental spill of nearly 9,000 gallons of toxic leachate into our environment.
While the experimental machine, called SAFF or foam fractionation, designed to filter pollutants from leachate, operated 24/7, it was staffed only a quarter of the time, for eight hours per day during the week, and two hours per weekend. It’s an accident waiting to happen.
Only after a group of local environmental volunteers brought this toxic spill to the attention of the press on March 2 did the public learn of the environmental accident. To this day, neither Casella nor Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the regulator, to our knowledge, has yet taken the initiative to inform citizens.
It is like each hopes the spill would never have seen the light of day — nobody the wiser.
Now that the public has been made aware from the press, Casella and Department of Environmental Conservation spokespeople, we feel, will make efforts to say that most of the toxic 9,000-gallon leachate spill was contained and captured and that Vermont’s and Canada’s environment were in no way endangered. It is like putting lipstick on a pig.
The site of the toxic spill was located upslope and within 650 feet of the Black River and occurred in the early hours going into the weekend of Feb. 24. No one was on duty. Extensive wetlands lie in between. Nearly 9,000 gallons is the approximate capacity of a long semi-truck tanker.
Casella spokespeople claim the toxic spill never left the boundary of its property. The fact is that their western boundary is the Black River itself, primary tributary to South Bay and Lake Memphremagog, from which 175,000 Canadian neighbors take their drinking water. Where are independent, objective, state test evaluations to corroborate Casella’s claim ?
According to Environmental Protection Agency standards today, the Coventry landfill never should have been permitted by the state of Vermont to be sited adjacent to extensive wetlands.
Moreover, it is just two football fields upslope of the Black River. It is the neighbor to Vermont’s South Bay Wildlife Management area. It is the potential polluter of Lake Memphremagog, an international lake, which is a major drinking water reservoir for thousands of Canadians.
We need to be better neighbors. No additional infrastructure at the landfill should be permitted from this time on.
To be credible in its work on behalf of Vermont citizens, the Department of Environmental Conservation needs to stand at arm’s length from the corporate landfill owner, which it is charged to regulate. The landfill owner should not be allowed to proceed with an experimental project without a formal permit to do so. A residential homeowner is held to a higher standard with their own septic waste.
We need to demand accountability and greater transparency from the Department of Environmental Conservation of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. Conservation is their job and they are not doing it in the Memphremagog watershed.
Yes, sugarmakers are careful about tending their rigs. They are also good stewards and good conservationists.
