Residents register disapproval
of Albion landfill possibilities

It was standing room only on March 10 as residents waited their turn to voice their concerns to Town of Albion officials on the proposed reopening of a landfill in Albion. Many residents had to wait in the hallway in order to switch places with someone inside the filled-to-capacity meeting room when it came their time to speak. Of all the people who spoke out during the meeting, no one voiced a favorable opinion on the landfill.

Village of Albion Mayor Ed Salvatore said it has taken the community more than 10 years to rebuild with upgrades to school facilities, expansion of Washington Mutual, a push for Erie Canal related tourism and a population growth. All those efforts, he said, will have been for nothing if Waste Management is allowed to build a new 80 acre landfill. The proposed landfill will be situated between Transit and Densmore Roads and will border the towns of Albion, Gaines and Murray.

Town of Albion Supervisor Eugene Christopher reminded residents that the meeting was a regular board meeting, not a public hearing on the landfill. "We will be having a special meeting on the first Monday in April to look at the issues of local concern ... economic, pollution, impact on the character and property values in the area," Christopher said.

"I'm strongly opposed to a landfill in Albion," Senator George Maziarz said in a letter sent to town officials. "It is in an environmentally wrong place, economically it will do more harm than good and aesthetically it will be a blight on the area."

Speaking on behalf of the Albion School Board, President Michael Bonafede said the school is unified in its concern for its 7,000 students. "Frustrated and anxious drivers, heavy trucks and children on their way to school makes for a lethal combination," he said.

One hundred percent of the truck traffic to and from the landfill will be on the school's bus routes and 80 percent of the trucks will pass in front of the school, Bonafede said.

Saying that town board officials have a responsibility for ensuring the safety of generations to come, Pat Wood, director of Stop Polluting Orleans County (SPOC) asked if there was truly a need for another facility of this type in the county. "Our air and water quality and public health will suffer," she said. "Based on Waste Management's past history, the town should reject this proposal."

Another area of concern voiced by those in attendance was the fact that a recent decision by the Department of Environmental Conservation would require the landfill to hire an outside firm to monitor their compliance with the environmental law. That outside firm would be paid for by Waste Management.

This switch, Michael Shade, a Western New York director of the Citizens Environmental Coalition said, will result in a loss of objectivity in monitoring the landfills and loss of accountability on the part of the landfills.

Orleans County Legislator George Bower spoke, not on behalf of the legislature but on behalf of himself and the group of senior citizens that he meets with on a monthly basis. "The visitors who come to Albion aren't going to go back and tell their friends about our canal trails or our sights, they will tell their friends about the dump," he said.

Bower urged officials to think of the elderly, of which he is one, he said. "The elderly people wait all winter long to be able to open their windows and hear the birds, with the proposed truck traffic they won't have that ... think of them ... let them hear the birds."

Co-directors of the Albion Betterment Committee, Gary Derwick and Gary Kent, said the committee seeks to capitalize on the beauty of Albion. "We want to make this an area where people will come to visit," Derwick said. "The community will suffer under a mountain of garbage and the trucks will be a grimy reminder of the psychological damage of the dump."

Derwick said that the possible short term gains of the reopening of a landfill would pale in comparison to the long term detriment to the community.