Dump hearing to target vile odor
The Times Union
ALBANY, NY - Environmentalists and neighbors will square off against city plans to expand the Rapp Road dump into the Pine Bush during a public hearing Wednesday.
Colonie Village Mayor Frank Leak already knows what he is going to say. "What are they going to do about the smell?" the mayor asked Monday. "I'll be at the hearing with my attorney and some of my board members. We are going to keep fighting this."
Complaints about vile odors wafting off the dump have gone on for years. In August, the state Department of Environmental Conservation fined the city $50,000 for failing to control the stink and ordered expensive improvements to an underground gas piping system.
In May 2005, DEC fined the city $50,000 for dump odors, for allowing garbage into drainage ditches and for allowing leachate -- a liquid formed by rotting garbage -- to collect on the ground. And in 1996, the city was fined $2,500 for odors at the dump.
Leak said he will submit a petition Wednesday signed by more than 100 people who oppose the latest expansion of the dump, which is near the city's border with the village of Colonie at the edge of the protected Pine Bush Preserve.
Wednesday's hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Polish Community Center on Rapp Road at Washington Avenue Extension.
Save the Pine Bush, an environmental group that opposes development in the area, also is working to rally opponents, said Lynne Jackson, the group's secretary.
"We've been leafleting the neighborhoods for the last couple of weeks. We have handed out thousands of fliers," she said. "It is amazing that the city wants to expand the landfill when it stinks so bad. And the odors are getting worse."
Under the proposal, the dump would be expanded eastward into the area around the current transfer station and would also require the use of about three acres of state-owned pine barrens that are not part of the preserve.
The expansion would add seven to eight years' capacity to the dump, which accepts garbage from private haulers and the communities in a consortium that includes Rensselaer, Watervliet, Berne, Bethlehem, Guilderland, Knox, New Scotland, Rensselaerville, Westerlo, Green Island and Altamont.
The city is racing to come up with a plan to expand the dump before it fills up, possibly as early as 2009, which would spawn a garbage crisis in the city and region.
Two earlier expansion proposals, one into the grounds of the nearby Fox Run Estates mobile home park and another into the protected preserve, were dropped after running into vocal opposition.
Jackson said the new plan betrays a 2000 deal between the state and city that kept the massive Drumlin Fields office complex from being built along Rapp Road. Under that agreement, the developer traded 45.8 acres to the state for the Pine Bush Preserve and in return received a 19-acre parcel off Washington Avenue.
The three acres being sought by the city are part of the 45.8 acres. At the time, the move was hailed by then-Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Jerry Jennings and environmentalists as a way to save the Pine Bush from development while accommodating economic growth in the city.
Growing concerns
What: A public hearing on the city of Albany's plan to expand the Rapp Road dump
Where: Polish Community Center, Rapp Road and Washington Avenue Extension
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Information: William J. Clark at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, 357-2069.| |
