Brookhaven has a trash problem.

Our town landfill in Yaphank is a repeat violator of air quality rules, emits foul odor emissions that are driving out local residents, and its mandated closure is expected to result in a $33 million budget shortfall when the landfill capping is complete in 2024. Even more troubling is the fact that the trash we burn at the Covanta plant, which is then shipped back to Brookhaven and spread at the landfill, is potentially toxic. In fact, once the town learned in 2013 of a whistleblower lawsuit against Covanta regarding toxic ash, Brookhaven joined the suit. Even as Covanta continued to make generous political donations to elected officials in Brookhaven.

Throughout 2019, the town's elected officials, led by Supervisor Ed Romaine, made a lot of vague promises as to how the town plans to address its landfill crisis. They said it was a regional problem that required a regional solution, even as Supervisor Romaine pulled out of the Long Island Regional Planning Council. They refused to accept counter proposals that would directly address Brookhaven's solid waste problem.

Well, now that the entire population is focused on a global pandemic, large scale protests, and a Presidential election, in typical Brookhaven fashion, the town board has decided to push the idea of a second landfill, or more accurately an "ash-fill".

According to Newsday:

"The urgency stems from the scheduled closure of the town’s massive landfill at the end of 2024, and the fact that the facility accepts 350,000 tons of ash burned by the waste-to-energy plants in the region as well as 720,000 tons of construction and demolition debris from Long Island and parts of New York City, the largest by far of two facilities on Long Island to handle C&D debris.

So where is all that garbage going to go?

Some of it, possibly, still to Brookhaven in the form of a new landfill.

“Fortunately, Brookhaven Town owns additional land just east of the landfill that could be used as a regional ashfill for the various waste to energy plants handling solid waste for Babylon, Brookhaven, Hempstead, Huntington, Islip and Smithtown Townships,” Romaine wrote to The Point in an email.

Romaine said such a facility would handle only ash, not C&D debris. And while the fees such an ashfill would generate would help cushion the blow from a total landfill closure to Brookhaven’s budget, it still would leave a huge problem for the region given that disposing all the C&D debris would add to the 2,000 trucks already carting solid waste off Long Island every day, exacting a big toll on the region’s aging road and bridge infrastructure.

Romaine said the town board will be making a decision about the landfill in the near future as it weighs all of our options.

Romaine also outlined his concerns in a letter last month to the Long Island Regional Planning Council, which has been exploring the issue."

In other words, Brookhaven would skirt existing state environmental laws by eliminating aspects of the new site that would classify it as a "landfill", i.e. construction debris, and instead just accept ash, which would make it an "ash-fill". Except the ash was always the problem!

Question: How do we deal with a solid waste and environmental dilemma, when the town proposes to build an ash-fill that would take potentially toxic ash from towns all around Suffolk County, for profit?

This would not be a fiscal or environmental solution to our solid waste issues.

As a signer of this petition, you are calling on Ed Romaine and the Brookhaven Town Board to:

-Reject any proposals relating to a second landfill or "ash-fill" site

-Re-join the Long Island Regional Planning Council

-Develop a comprehensive proposal to deal with our solid waste crisis, that can be brought to our regional partners at the state, county, and town levels for their buy-in.

-Keep a high level of communication between town officials and town residents, so that we are constantly updated, informed, and involved in policy discussions related to our landfill and solid waste crisis.