No action yet on landfill questions

DAVID HULSE
Posted 5/9/18

NARROWSBURG, NY — The discussion continued, but no direction was decided on questions about reported leachate tank spills at the former Barnes Landfill at the May 3 meeting of the Upper …

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No action yet on landfill questions

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NARROWSBURG, NY — The discussion continued, but no direction was decided on questions about reported leachate tank spills at the former Barnes Landfill at the May 3 meeting of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC).

For a second month, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) delegate Bill Rudge did not attend the meeting.

The River Reporter made repeated inquiries about the landfill status to DEC’s regional office beginning on April 11 and received an email response on May 1, after last week’s edition was completed. The response provided a description and history, but little about the agency’s current oversight. “…DEC last inspected the landfill in 2017 and noted that the tank contained leachate but was not overflowing. There were no signs of recent overflows. DEC routinely inspects inactive landfills, and Barnes is typical of many sites that DEC is managing statewide.”

UDC resource specialist Pete Golod said he is in the first phase of the research he needs to do before making a planned inquiry to DEC and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) as directed at the April meeting of UDC’s Water Use & Resource Management Committee (WURM). Golod said that will involve researching years of newspaper clippings and other documents between 1986 and the completion of the engineered closure 1992.

With the escrow funds depleted and no apparent land ownership, the question remained as to who is now responsible for pumping leachate from the leachate tanks. With DEC absent last week, WURM chair Fred Peckham asked DRBC delegate Peter Eschbach if the agency would respond to questions about the landfill. Eschbach said DRBC would forward any landfill queries to DEC.

While the DEC response was measured and slow in coming, another source said DEC is no longer concerned with tank overflow and is instead regularly monitoring a test well nearer downgrade campground sites.

In other business, the council heard the National Park Service (NPS) announce a funding arrangement to replace the $7,828 that UDC paid for accounting services in fulfilling an NPS demand for 30 years of audit reports during a financial review last fall. Those same reports had been filed annually without NPS comment over the 30-year period.

They heard Eschbach report that DRBC had received 9,000 written comments and 200 oral testaments during public hearings on proposed rules governing fracking in the basin. He said those documents and comments are now being reviewed. From those he’d read, Eschbach commented, “We seemed to have pissed off everyone, so we must be doing something right.”

Delaware delegate Harold Roeder commented on gas drilling, noting that drilling in Susquehanna County, PA had added $4.6 billion to the economy and “water degradation had never been proven. It can all exist together,” he said.

Narrowsburg, DEC

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