SPOC wins landfill lawsuit

It wasn't entirely what they had hoped for, but in a recent court decision, two Orleans County environmental groups received at least 75 percent of what they were fighting for.

Patricia Wood, director of environmental facilities for the grassroots organization Stop Polluting Our County (SPOC), said members of the group were very happy with the decision. Two environmental groups, SPOC and the statewide organization Citizens' Environmental Coalition, (CEC), won a decision by the Albany County Supreme Court against state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Erin Crotty. The two groups challenged Crotty's decision to allow Waste Management of New York to hire its own monitors at a proposed landfill in Albion. Wood likened the monitoring to "letting the fox guard the henhouse."

Prior to Crotty's administration, the DEC required landfill operators to pay for DEC engineers to serve as on-site environmental monitors. "In this day and age, it's rare for a grassroots organization to get a ruling like this in their favor," Wood said. "But the judge said 'this is not right and the public should be monitoring the landfill.' We feel this was a very monumental decision."

Mike Schade, Western New York Director for CEC, said, "This decision should give us time to urge that new legislation be enacted that permanently stops the Commissioner from weakening one of the only measures that assures New Yorkers will know when environmental protection laws are being violated."

Under the court's decision the DEC must either reinstate the old policy of monitoring or provide notice, and an opportunity for public comment, before officially changing the policy.

Gary Abraham, attorney for SPOC, said the decision dismisses the claim that Waste Management's fitness should go on to an administrative hearing. "It was dismissed on the narrow grounds that SPOC failed to provide evidence of Waste Management's poor compliance record," he explained.

The court's action granting the monitoring issue of the petition is an important victory, Abraham said, because it appears that environmentalists will join with the DEC's own union in opposing any attempt by the commissioner to eliminate DEC on-site monitors.

Documents filed with the SPOC-CEC lawsuit included statements by representatives from DEC's union showing that the cost of DEC on-site monitors is entirely paid for by facilities subject to monitoring, including salary, fringe benefits, travel and training. "The argument that this was a cost-cutting measure within the Commissioner's discretion was not accepted by the court," according to Abraham.

Wood said the group has not decided if they will be appealing the fitness issue. "We will decide that later this week," she said. "With the fitness issue being left the way it was it means we will have to remain ever vigilant and at election time we must make certain we keep an environmentally conscious board."

In the future, Abraham said that SPOC and CEC will join many others in vigorously participating in submitting comments and challenging Waste Management's permits based on the company's poor environmental track record. "Environmental groups and towns who don't want a major garbage facility must only be careful to look into Waste Management's past environmental violations," he said. "If they do, it won't be hard to develop a record showing the company cuts corners and pays fines rather than paying what it really costs to operate within the law."

Wood said she wished to thank the community for their support. "We think we've shown the community that we have done a good job and that we've used their donations very wisely and it's paid off."