NARROWSBURG, NY — An October 18 meeting bringing state officials to the table to talk about solutions for uncontrolled leachate discharges from the former Barnes Landfill in Minisink Ford did not result in any solution, officials said at the November 1 meeting of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC).

Test-well sampling results provided to the UDC earlier by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) indicated the presence of nine different toxins in those samplings.

“Nothing really transpired,” county legislator and Lumberland delegate Nadia Rajsz summarized. DEC officials met in Monticello with county, Town of Highland and UDC representatives. State officials told the group that DEC oversees some 2,000 abandoned landfills. There is mitigation funding, but only in cases where drinking water has been affected, Rajsz said. “The Department of Health has tested neighboring drinking water wells, but DEC has not responded to requests for data from those tests,” she said.

Rajsz said she has asked Rep. John Faso’s office to intervene but had received no response. “I imagine the election has complicated things,” she said.

The DEC would need to nominate the site for Superfund funding. Bill Rudge, the DEC delegate to the UDC, did not attend last week’s meeting, and the council has had no related correspondence from the state agency.

UDC Resource Specialist Pete Golod held out some hope for some word from a DEC official with whom he had prior correspondence. “There is a tear in the [sealed] lining. Apparently, it’s been there a while. Two months, two years? They don’t know. We have requested data,” he said.

Town of Delaware UDC delegate Hal Roeder said the DEC attitude was contradictory to their policy with agriculture. “They tell farmers ‘Don’t do it, it could be bad.’ Here they won’t do anything unless something is already wrong.”

UDC Chair Aaron Robinson could not understand the DEC position, as New York governors dating back to Mario Cuomo (1994) have signed and renewed an executive order requiring the state’s cooperation implementing the River Management Plan. “An executive order means the state will cooperate. How could the government ignore this? It’s a legal document,” he said.

Berlin Township delegate Al Henry suggested that UDC should “get Faso to send someone to talk directly to DEC. No one is answering letters.”

Cochecton UDC delegate Larry Richardson asked, “If the state is aware of toxins leaving the landfill and people are consuming water there, is it a good idea to wait [on remedial action]?

The DEC oversaw an engineered closure of the landfill in 1992. Escrow money, funding regular pumping and removal of leachate collection tanks has since expired, and the two possible owners of the land are now dead. The property went unclaimed at the time of a tax sale and the county, which ordinarily seizes such properties, declined to take title. DEC later offered remediation funding to Highland, if the town assumed responsibility, but as the town never contracted with the landfill, officials declined.

In other business, UDC reported that NYSDOT had issued a stop-work order on Barryville river flood-plain property, which had become a UDC-Highland confrontation when the town failed to provide planning documentation for the council’s required zoning review. The state will require the property owner to either obtain a variance for an encroachment issue, or buy the right-of-way property in question. Project Review Committee Chair Richardson felt that resolution of the state’s issue would resolve the UDC’s issue. “Up to now, we’ve always gotten information from Highland. This time we had a little roadblock,” he said.

Rajsz defended the county’s environmental study for the new Millennium Pipeline compressor station in Highland, which was cited in Project Review discussion for its lack of testing for levels of several project related toxins in air emissions. Rajsz said the county took on the Millennium-sponsored baseline study with no expertise in the area. “We did the best we could with the money we had… There is nothing preventing others from funding studies.”