What Ever Happened To The Garbage Problem?

Do you remember a time when the issue of solid waste was our primary environmental concern?  The issues related to garbage -- what to do with it all, how to reduce it, how damaging it is to our environment -- are all still with us, but they rarely get any airtime anymore.  Perhaps solid waste just isn't the existential threat that climate change is, and so we have changed our focus. 

But our garbage has to go somewhere, and we are still producing way too much of it.  Most people do not know where their garbage ultimately gets buried or burned, and that may only add to the problem.  If we don't know where the garbage we produce goes, or how it affects another community, why should we be concerned with where it goes or how much we produce?  If the garbage man keeps taking the stuff away without hesitation, why should anyone be concerned?  But our waste has to go in someone's "backyard" -- the stuff doesn't just disappear when the garbage truck drives away.

If you put your trash in a blue bag for DPW to pick up or if you drop your trash off at a Columbia County Transfer Station, it will be trucked to the largest garbage dump in New York State -- the Senaca Meadows Landfill in Senaca, a town of 2,500 residents in the lovely Finger Lakes region.  This is, essentially, Hudson and Columbia County's landfill. (Hudson DPW is charged by Columbia County to drop the blue bags off at the county's Greenport Transfer Station).

Every day, Monday through Friday, the Columbia County Solid Waste Department, through a contracted trucking firm, sends a few diesel-burning tractor-trailers over 200 miles from Greenport to Senaca to bury our daily waste.  Then the empty truck will turn around come back to Greenport to do the same thing over and over again.  But, like all garbage dumps, they don't last forever.

I won't go into too much detail, but the story, and future, of our landfill is fascinating.  The Senaca Meadows Landfill is owned by a company from Texas (already things don't look good, right?).  In short, the landfill is supposed to shut down next year, but the owners have filed a petition with the DEC to extend the landfill's operations until 2040.  As you can imagine, most people who are forced to smell the huge landfill and deal with all the trucks coming from all over the northeast to dump there, want Senaca Meadows to be shut down as soon as possible.  The story has political and corporate shenanigans, 100 jobs at stake, environmental concerns, community pride, and plenty of finger pointing.   

But why should anyone in Hudson or Columbia County care about the fate of the Senaca Meadows Landfill?  We are so separated from our trash's resting place that it can't seem very important what happens to that landfill.  But at some time, maybe next year, that landfill (our landfill) will close, just like Hudson's former garbage dump on 2nd Street closed when it filled up years ago.  Then what?  What landfill will our trash then go to and when will that landfill fill up and be forced to close?  Since creating new landfills in New York is next to impossible, then it's on to Pennsylvania, or perhaps Indiana, where mega-landfills (yes, it's a term!) await our trash.  Things get more expensive, there's lots more truck mileage, more fuel consumption and toxic exhaust, and we are further removed from our waste.  Is that really what we should be doing with our garbage, sending it further and further away to the lowest bidder that wants to handle it?  Talk about unsustainable.  

I guess we can be thankful that our landfill is not located here in Columbia County.  But maybe it should be.  Maybe all trash should be local.  At least then we would all know where our trash is going and be forced to stop producing so much of it.  We can't just keep sending our trash to landfills that continue to fill up and close, can we?  Where is the incentive to reduce the amount of garbage we produce?  What happens when landfills are no longer an option -- at least those within, say, 500 miles of Hudson?  Do we then start burning all of our waste somewhere, maybe right here in the Hudson Valley?  

Like the climate crisis, our garbage situation is not an easy fix.  But fixing it needs -- the problem has not gone away, and it never will.  Out of sight, out of mind is not helping the situation.

There is no shortage of articles and info online about the Senaca Meadows Landfill.  The company that owns Senaca Meadows, Waste Connections, even has its own propaganda site about the landfill, which is entertaining.  I offer it here, somewhat reluctantly: landfill.