Here is a related article about the landfill in Seneca County...
How an upstate town famous for a Christmas classic film became NY's dumping ground:
https://www.uticaod.com/story/news/2...tica-nletter01
"Each December, Seneca Falls celebrates its connection to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 film directed by Frank Capra, who is said to have modeled his fictional Bedford Falls on the Finger Lakes town.
Grown men dress up like Uncle Billy, the well-meaning, absent-minded soul with strings on his fingers who bungles a bank deposit by handing it over to the evil Mr. Potter.
They’ll recall the words the angel Clarence inscribed to Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey in a copy of Tom Sawyer. “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends,” he writes. “Thanks for the wings. Love Clarence.”
It’s a weekend that evokes all that’s good about small towns.
Lately, though, things in Seneca Falls have gone way off script.
Things are, well, not so wonderful. And this time Mr. Potter’s not the problem.
It’s the out-of-town owners of a massive landfill out along Route 414.
At 350 acres, the Seneca Meadows landfill is the state’s largest, taking in some 2 million tons of garbage — food scraps, paper and plastic — each year, much of it trucked up from New York City, which doesn’t have a landfill.
Locals have taken to calling it “Garbage Mountain” and “Mount Dumpsmore,” a smelly eyesore that, for some, serves as an unwelcome guide star.
“Anytime you go away and you come home, if I’m asleep in the car I smell the landfill,” said Barb Reese, a teacher who would like the landfill to shut down. “I know I’m home.”
It’s been around since 1983, providing millions of dollars in annual payments to Seneca Falls, while boosting an extended economy of auto repair shops, supermarkets, diners and the like. Waste Connections, the Texas-based owner, estimates its impact on the local economy at $72 million.
“Seneca Meadows might be the only thing we got,” a landfill supporter and neighbor said at a meeting of the Seneca Falls town board last month. “When I open up the door and go out in the morning, what I smell is money.”
Many hoped the smell would go away in 2025, when the landfill’s state permit is set to expire.
But Waste Connections had other plans. They’re petitioning the state for a permit to use another 47 acres of the existing landfill to dump garbage and to increase the landfill's height by 70 feet.
Waste Connections spokesman Kyle Black could not be reached for comment on the company’s expansion.
The plan has become a referendum on the future of a town trying to shed its past as the state’s dumping ground while embracing the scores of wine-loving travelers who trek to the Finger Lakes for the lakefront vistas.
Matt Venuti left the Finger Lakes three decades ago to pursue a career as a musician in San Francisco before returning during the pandemic. The place he left was mostly a “ghost town” with a few wineries. Now, he says, it attracts people from all over the world.
“We should be striving for a way to eliminate a lot of the stuff that we throw away,” said Venuti. “But until that day comes, the Finger Lakes should not be the dumping grounds of the United States or at least New York state.”
Why NY can't get away from landfills
The seeds of the battle roiling Seneca Falls today were planted more than 30 years ago.
In reports dating back more than 30 years, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has made it clear that when it comes to managing waste, landfills should be a last resort.
They’re the third largest source of methane emissions in the U.S.
But they remain the state’s primary method for disposing of solid waste. Nearly 40% of the state’s solid waste goes to landfills, while another 27% is sent out of state.
The state’s recycling rate of nearly 20% is below the national average of 32%. And it's been around the same rate between 2008 and 2018, according to a state DEC report released in February.
That means food that could be composted, and cardboard boxes, bottles and plastic that could be recycled end up in landfills. It’s why waste keeps streaming up to Seneca Meadows at a pace of 6,000 tons per day.
And the buzzword state officials use to describe their vision — a circular economy where waste is reused or recycled — remains just that.
“Thirty years later, the majority of the materials generated are still managed by the lowest priority strategy (landfilling)," the state’s draft Solid Waste Management Plan noted in February, adding that New York is still striving to achieve its recycling goals initially targeted to be achieved by 1997.
State DEC commissioner Basil Seggos says “bold action” is needed to reduce the state's dependence on landfills, which he said was a "critical strategy" to help meet New York's climate goals.
But recycling advocates say New York shares the blame for failing to lock in solutions that would spur more recycling, like increasing redemption rates for bottles, encouraging more composting and passing a measure that would force manufacturers to use environmentally friendly packaging.
“There is so much to do and so many opportunities to reduce waste, but little has been actually accomplished in this area by the State of New York,” said Judith Enck, the former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama Administration who now heads the recycling group Beyond Plastics.
A town divided over landfill proposition
Over the past year, debates over the landfill’s future have turned Seneca Falls town board meetings into raucous theater.
There have been allegations Waste Connections funneled campaign contributions to board members who support their cause, financing the purchase of lawn signs during election time, and drumming up support for candidates online.
At October’s meeting, board members opposed to the landfill accused the town’s elected supervisor, Michael Ferrara, of engineering a backroom deal with landfill owners with an assist from his attorney brother, David, a member of the Bond, Schoeneck and King law firm in Syracuse.
Board member Steve Churchill alleged Ferrara was using town money to hire his brother to draft an agreement with Waste Connections that would guarantee the town millions of dollars in annual payments if the landfill wins state approval.
A clear conflict of interest, Churchill declared. He said a vote in favor of the agreement would signal the town’s support.
“Nothing is illegal,” Ferrara repeated.
“How about unethical or immoral?” Churchill replied.
“I don’t think either one,” the Republican Ferrara replied, growing visibly frustrated before crossing the aisle to invoke the memory of a popular Democrat.
“You know when John F. Kennedy was asked the question, ‘How can you appoint your brother Robert to be the attorney general, Kennedy’s response was, ‘Because he’s the best person available at this time and this country needs him,” Ferrara said. “It doesn’t matter that he’s my brother or not.”
“Bond Schoeneck and King attorney (Dave) Ferrara is born and raised in Seneca Falls and he did nothing but look out for the best interests of Seneca Falls,” Ferrara added. “Ok? Born and raised.”
Reached later, Ferrara said his opponents knew about his brother’s hiring and decided to air their grievances publicly to damage him ahead of November elections. And his brother notes that state law does not prevent a sibling from entering into a contract with a municipal officer.
“If the DEC says ‘no, you’re not getting a permit,’ we’ll move forward,” said Ferrara, a retired middle school principal. “I don’t know if you’re Catholic or not, but Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary could be on the town board. They’re not going to be able to stop that landfill from operating or not operating.”
He's spending his own money to shut it down
That hasn’t stopped Bill Lutz from trying.
Lutz’s company, Waterloo Container, makes bottles and corks for the wine industry in the Finger Lakes and beyond. The company — with 14 warehouses and 100 employees — had the second-best year in its 43-year history last year.
But it sits across the street from Seneca Meadows.
“It is a terrible mess,” Lutz said. “Not only the odors but the truck traffic and the garbage we have to deal with on a daily basis. Seagulls and also odors that infiltrate our building from time to time. That has been going on for almost 20 years now and getting worse by the day. With the new expansion that they’re looking for for the next 15 years, it’s just going to double those problems.”
He estimates over the past two years he’s spent nearly $400,000 in legal bills fighting the company’s expansion plans. “It’s just gotten too big, that’s really what it is,” Lutz said during an interview at his business in October. “It takes a lot of money to fight these big corporations.”
The Finger Lakes: the landfill capital of New York?
Dozens of the state’s landfills shut down in the 1980s after the passage of environmentally conscious regulations made it harder to stay in business.
In 1986, New York had 358 active landfills but only 47 with valid permits, according to the DEC.
Incinerators were built to burn garbage and millions of tons were shipped out of state.
Landfills that made the cut were outfitted with state-of-the-art liners to prevent groundwater contamination. Pipes were deployed to capture leachate — the dangerous chemicals that can migrate into the ground and water. Monitoring wells were added to detect leaks.
And, as the industry contracted, public landfills were replaced by private ones like Seneca Meadows. Solid waste had become big business.
The last of New York City’s landfills — Staten Island’s Fresh Kills — shut down in 2001. For more than 50 years, the 2,200-acre facility was taking in 17,000 tons of waste per day. It had to go somewhere.
In 2018, nearly three-quarters of Seneca Meadows’ municipal waste came from New York City (39%), Long Island (14%) and its northern suburbs (19%), according to the DEC’s 2023 report.
And it’s not just Seneca Meadows. The Finger Lakes region remains the last resting place for much of the state’s garbage.
Six of the state’s 25 municipal waste landfills are in an 11-county region that includes Chemung and Steuben counties to the south and Orleans, Monroe and Wayne to the north. Nearly a quarter of all the solid waste generated in New York City is sent to the region.
It’s also home to two landfills for construction debris and three industrial landfills.
Seneca Meadows is easily the largest. Seneca Meadows took in 2.1 million tons of solid waste in 2018 — roughly a quarter of the 9.3 million tons of municipal waste collected across the state.
It is one of 91 landfills owned by Waste Connections, which boasted $7 billion in revenue last year. The company says it has plans to expand at nine landfills, according to its earnings reports.
As the solid waste business has contracted, larger landfill owners have benefited, especially ones further away from where garbage is collected, according to the reports.
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Is New York doing enough to reduce landfill use?
Advocates say much of what ends up in landfills could be siphoned off through recycling. But recycling rates in New York have remained flat over the past two decades.
In 2010, New York established a goal of reducing the per-person, per day amount of municipal solid waste disposed from 4.1 pounds to 1.7 pounds by 2020. That hasn’t happened. The total barely budged between 2008 (4.1) and 2018 (4.09).
The DEC says it’s doing what it can to improve the state’s recycling record, by trying to create a circular economy so that whatever is used is reused or recycled.
Between 1993 and 2020, the state has invested $240 million in waste reduction and recycling programs, with more than 2,000 projects funded. Colleges and universities are researching environmentally friendly packaging and recycling markets.
In October, state lawmakers held two days of hearings to discuss measure that would improve the state’s recycling rate and reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.
One would double the nickel redemption rate for bottles that are returned and expand the types of bottles that can be redeemed.
Another would force manufacturers to use environment friendly packaging so more plastic and cardboard doesn’t end up in landfills. It has the backing of the DEC, which says it will shift the financial burden of recycling and disposal from municipalities and taxpayers to manufacturers.
The waste just keeps coming. So could the money.
Until those initiatives are in place, the stream of waste keeps flowing north.
Seneca Falls’ non-binding agreement with Waste Connections comes with a $1 million payment to the town once the new host agreement is in place, plus another $2 million if and when the company secures permits from the DEC.
The town would receive $173.6 million over 15 years.
Ferrara, the town supervisor, envisions some $2.5 million going into reserve for a sports complex, and $2 million in wastewater improvements, including money to fix aging sewer pipes.
He viewed the attack on the host agreement as an attempt by Churchill and Deputy Supervisor Kaitlyn Laskoski to tar him ahead of November elections, where he’s running on the Conservative Line.
He said Laskoski sat in on the negotiations with Waste Connections.
“I’m sure you’re a smart guy,” Ferrara said. “But there’s one reason and one reason only. It’s because she’s trying to, politically, make me lose the election. And that’s the only motivation here.”
Laskoski disagrees.
“Politics doesn’t belong in my playbook,” said Laskoski who, like Ferrara, is a Republican. “The way that l look at it is: What is best for my community.”
She said she raised questions about the agreement and with Dave Ferrara’s role in it because she wasn’t comfortable with the details.
“Optically it didn’t look good,” Laskoski said. “I’m not going to fast track anything. This is a big deal for our community and I am not just going to vote yes for the sheer purposes of. And if it’s not good I’m not doing it.”
Landfill opponents view the deal as part of Waste Connections’ continuing efforts to sway the town board by plying members with campaign contributions so they’ll back the landfill.
“What we have is a town board that is clearly in the pocket of this large predatory polluting corporation and is not representing the people fairly or adequately,” said Yvonne Taylor, the vice president of Seneca Lake Guardian, an environmental group.
The board’s time would be better spent talking to the state to find a way to “transition away from its addiction to dump money.”
Instead, Taylor said: “It gave a nod to SMI's (Seneca Meadows Inc.) continued operation and expansion through a new non-binding, blood-money deal.”
But Ferrara says towns have little power to shut down a business, likening it to trying to shutter WalMart because you don’t like how they “stack their shelves.”
“This is the United States of America, town boards can't close businesses,” Ferrara said. “But again, they can try. And then we'll go through the court system for another eight years. And all the time they will be operating in the town, Seneca Falls won't get a nickel.”
Reese and others, meanwhile, have called on the state Department of Health to investigate what they say is a cancer cluster among residents who live or work near the landfill.
Lutz’s wife, Annette, died in 2019 at the age of 59 after a bout with cancer. Doctors have suggested it may have been an environmental exposure, Lutz says.
She was a former member of the town board who wanted to see it shut down in 2025. “She certainly got a lot of awareness going and opened up a lot of eyes,” Lutz said.
The company keeps a website with updates on the expansion, officially the Valley Infill Expansion, which includes testimonials from business owners.
“The SMI Valley Infill will meet future critical regional waste disposal needs for a period of at least 15 years,” the company notes.
The DEC will issue a preliminary finding in the coming weeks. It’s already received some 600 public comments on the proposal. Waste Connections will have another chance to respond.
“I respect people’s opinion about the landfill, OK,” Ferrara, the town supervisor, said. “But it shouldn’t be all about the landfill. It should be to make Seneca Falls a better community for the residents.”
Zuzu Bailey comes back to Seneca Falls
Karolyn Grimes, who played ZuZu Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life," will travel from her California home to Seneca Falls the weekend of Dec. 8-10 where she’ll be joined by Jimmy Hawkins, who played Tommy Bailey, and twins Donald and Ronald Collins, who played Pete Bailey.
There, she'll be asked for what seems the 3,00th time, to repeat the film’s most enduring phrase, one she uttered as a 6-year-old while Stewart held her in his arms: “Look Daddy, Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”
This will be Grimes’ 21st year coming back to Seneca Falls, and she still remembers her first visit.
“There wasn’t another soul in the town on the streets,” she recalled. “And we walked down the center of the Main Street and you could see the bridge, it was all lit up. And the angels and the Christmas wreath across the street…It was so Christmassy and quiet, not a sound. And I just felt it in my bones. This is the place. This is the place.”
It’s an image of peace and tranquility that, lately, has been hard to come by in Seneca Falls.
In the end, perhaps it’s just a movie."
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