Landfill neighbors denounce plan for expansion
The Times Union
ALBANY, NY - Carmelo Privtera, a resident of the Avila retirement community, told a state Department of Environmental Conservation representative Wednesday night what most of the other 200 residents think about the proposed expansion of the Rapp Road landfill.
"Something is rotten in Albany," he said, as two dozen residents from his complex stood to support him, some leaning on canes, during a meeting in the Polish Community Center. "The vile smell barely covers the topic."
Residents who live on all sides of the landfill came to protest Albany's plan to expand the dump by 15 acres.
The city wants to enlarge the landfill because at its current rate, it will be full by 2009. The expansion is expected to extend the dump's life by about 10 years.
Residents said that besides odors, they worry about the pollution the landfill expansion would create.
A Colonie woman said the stench wakes her up on summer nights and that she pulled her children out of a nursery school near the site.
Other residents came armed with statistics about the health of people who live near landfills and facts about the carcinogens that may be wafting into the air at the dump.
And they were concerned about the 15 acres of the Pine Bush it would eat up. Several wore T-shirts that were for sale outside the meeting that read: "No Dump in the Pine Bush, make a stink about the stink."
The Pine Bush is home to the endangered Karner blue butterfly.
Residents also said the city could extend the life of the landfill if it stopped taking refuse from other municipalities. Albany receives about $13 million a year -- one-tenth of its annual budget -- by accepting trash from private haulers and communities in the ANSWERS consortium: Cohoes, Rensselaer, Watervliet, Berne, Bethlehem, Guilderland, Knox, New Scotland, Rensselaerville, Westerlo, Green Island and Altamont.
Albany, residents said, is addicted to trash.
They also demanded that the city implement and enforce better recycling regulations to reducing the amount of waste that goes to the landfill.
City resident Lorenz M. Worden says he watches workers empty the garbage and cardboard trash bins from his church into the same truck every week.
"It's a charade to think cardboard cartons are separated, because they're not," he said.
Two hours and 15 minutes into the meeting only one person spoke in favor of the expansion -- and was booed.
"We have to think of reality and the reality is now we can't go without the expansion," said Delaware Avenue resident Tim Carney, who noted the city has no other place to put trash.
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