Chapter VI:
Issues Regarding "Greater Brookhaven" Impact Areas
1. The Brookhaven Town Landfill and Waste Management Issues
Boaters on the Great South Bay, observers from Fire
Island dunes, drivers on the Sunrise Highway all have come to
recognize the Brookhaven Town Landfill as a major new feature of the
Long Island landscape often dominating the horizon and certainly
dominating the list of local environmental concerns within our study
area.
More than a decade ago, it was recognized that
leachate from the landfill has been advancing in a plume through the
groundwater south toward the Bay, contaminating wells and threatening
the waters of the Beaver Dam Creek and, ultimately, the Bay itself. As
a direct result of this contamination of the groundwater, Brookhaven
Town began the subsidized installation of public water along
residential streets in the affected area. This installation has been
completed in Brookhaven Hamlet; it has not yet been undertaken in
South Haven which is equally affected.
Odors from the landfill have been a major problem in
our study area, at one point prompting then Governor Cuomo to dispatch
Richard Kessel to investigate the matter and expedite the Towns
e6orts to mitigate the problem. More important, serious concerns about
elevated rates of respiratory ailments at the nearby Frank P. Long
School and the Horizon Village residential development have raised the
issue of a direct impact on the health of local citizens due to
emissions from the landfill.
For the past two years, the Town has been moving
ahead with plans to expand the landfill, nearly doubling its present
size, through the construction of Cell 5. This new cell will serve
primarily as a repository of incinerator ash, to meet the requirements
of the Intermunicipal Agreement between Brookhaven and Hempstead Towns
(the "ash-for-trash" dea1). Citizens of Brookhaven and South Haven
Hamlets have actively opposed this deal, primarily for two reasons:
1.) The expansion of the landfill and its continued use to stockpile
ash, with its known high content of toxic components, further
threatens the health and environment of our community; and, 2.) this
use of the landfill, as a highly effective revenue engine fueled by
garbage, skews the economics of waste management in Brookhaven Town in
such a way as to discourage efforts at recycling and reducing the
overall waste stream.
We believe that the solid waste management plan (SWMP)
adopted by the Town (and accepted by the State DEC) is deficient, and
that communities such as ours can play a valuable role in helping to
improve it. As an example, in 1992, the BVA Board proposed that the
Hamlet become the site of a pilot program for a pay-by-weight, or "pay
as you throw" approach to garbage collection, whereby residents would
pay a specified amount for each pickup of non-recyclable waste, based
on weight or container size. Pickup of recyclables would be free. In
other communities, this scheme had proven successful in reducing the
amount of residential garbage in the waste stream, while producing
significant savings in garbage fees for participating households. A
questionnaire distributed in the community by the BVA in 1993 got a
significant (over 70 responses mailed back) and overwhelmingly
positive response. We met with Supervisor LaMura, then-Commissioner of
Waste Management James Heil, and Councilman Felix Grucci to discuss
the possibility of implementing such a pilot program. To our great
disappointment, the Town was not willing to follow through. Worse,
under the current contract with its carters, the Town has actually
reduced the rate of recycling pickups.
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