Statewide Distinctions We Should Be Concerned About

A bit of a departure today from the typical Hudseen fare:  Garbage and oddly high costs and fees at our county level!  

Anyone using the scale at the Columbia County Solid Waste Department's Greenport Transfer Station to dispose of bulk waste will be charged a disposal fee (aka, tipping fee) of $150 per ton.  (The fee rose from $140 in August of 2022.)  $150 is most definitely the highest tipping fee the CCSWD has ever had.  Additionally, last month the County Public Works Committee approved a price increase for CCSWD's recycling permits starting in 2024.  The recycling permit, which allow county residents to drop off recyclables at any of the 9 transfer stations, has cost $50 since the permit system was initiated a few years ago.  The annual permits will now cost $75.  The price for seniors will now be $50, up from $35. 

Meanwhile, at the Tompkins County Transfer Station in Ithaca, the tipping fee is $96 per ton, which is $54 (or 36%) less than our fee here in Columbia County.  Tompkins residents must have a $30 annual permit to use the facility for garbage disposal, but no permit is needed for dropping off general recycling or scrap metal, both completely free of charge.  Here in Columbia County, however, if you want to dispose of scrap metal in the most environmentally responsible way (by getting it recycled!), it will cost you $150/ton, the same price as just throwing it in with the garbage.  What kind of incentive is that to recycle and save the planet?  How is that helpful?  

Across the river in Catskill at the Greene County Transfer Station, the tipping fee is $125 per ton.  There is no fee to recycle (including all scrap metal), nor are permits required, at least as far as I can tell.

The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency currently has a tipping fee of $110 for residents.

Orange County?  $128.

Albany County?  $122.

Washington County? $95/ton!  No charge for scrap metal recycling or general recycling. 

Sullivan County?  $120.  No charge for scrap metal recycling or general recycling.

Greene County has a population of about one-third the size of  Columbia County (40,000/60,000), encompassing about the same square mileage.  They operate 4 transfer stations; we operate 9 of them.  The southern half of our county has 5 transfer stations for residents -- some of them separated by just a few miles:  Livingston and Hillsdale are open just twice a week for a total of 12 hours; Germantown and Copake are also open just twice a week, but for 16 hours; Gallatin (Ancram) is open only on Saturdays for 8 hours; Greenport is open 6 days a week.  Talk about inefficient.  I have attended County Pubic Works meetings where the subject of closing transfer stations has arisen, but there is practically laughter in the room.  They know that 9 stations are far too many, but no one ever follows through on what they know they should do for fear of angering too many residents who rely on their convenient transfer stations.  Again:  Greene County has 4 stations; we have 9!  Tompkins County operates just one transfer station.

My sense is that the CCSWD is run so inefficiently and wastefully that it has no other option but to raise its tipping fee higher than any other county, perhaps offering us the highest tipping fee at a county-operated transfer station in the entire State Of New York.  The cost of a recycling permit appears to be unrivaled, too.  But why?  Is our waste something special and more valuable than elsewhere?  Do we get the white glove treatment at our stations to get rid of our garbage and recycling?   If the CCSWD were a business, it probably would have been put out of business by the competition long ago.  In my mind, it has lost its way and is not minding its expenses properly.  It might be time for an outside auditor to take a look at where all CCSWD's revenues are being spent.

It's a big red flag indicating poor management and environmental stewardship (and, in my book, a crime) that we are charged anything, let alone $150/ton, to recycle scrap metal.  There can be no justification for doing this if the CCSWD is serious about "providing environmentally sound solid waste management at the most economical cost," as its mission statement declares.  

The county delivers its scrap metal to a processor in Albany (paying someone to drive a full dumpster all the way there, then back empty!) and is paid for it.  CCSWD is getting paid twice for scrap metal!  How is that sensible and fair and "economical" for residents?  Sounds like a scam and money grab to me.  (There is a scrap metal dealer across the river in Leeds that CCSWD does not appear to do business with.)

The CCSWD contracts with a company called Casella Waste Systems (also known as New England Waste Services) to take away all of our garbage and our recycling for final burial.  Casella contracts with a trucking company that delivers our garbage to a Casella-owned landfill in Ontario County (or one of their other landfills in the state), and the CCSWD is charged for each of those trips.  We (CCSWD) pay Casella $85/ton (including transportation) to landfill our garbage, and the CCSWD charges us $150/ton to start the process of disposal.   If we're paying a company that owns a landfill to take our garbage away, why is our tipping fee so much higher than everyone else's and possibly the highest in the state?  What is CCSWD doing differently that necessitates such a higher tipping fee than others?

Last Friday, the Columbia County Solid Waste Transfer Station in Greenport was closed in observance of Veteran's Day, as all county offices and the other county transfer stations were.  On the following day, a Saturday, all the transfer stations, including Greenport, were once again closed because, according to an employee at the station offices on Monday, "the actual holiday fell on Saturday."  This same person told me that the stations were closed on Friday because of "contractual obligations."  According to the Greene County Solid Waste Department's website, their transfer stations were closed last week for one day, on Saturday only.

Sometime in the past few years (or last year), the CCSWD finally starting accepting credit cards at the Greenport Transfer Station (it had been checks or cash only).  I couldn't find any reference on the CCSWD website about what forms of payment are acceptable at the station, but a CCSWD office worker told me today that they do accept credit card payments, "with a 2.35% processing fee added to the total." 

A year ago, the State DEC slapped Casella with a half million dollar civil penalty "to address several years of violations at the Ontario County landfill" according to a press release on our DEC's website.  At issue were: "air quality, water quality, solid waste operations, and overall quality of life for the community."  The company that we pay to dispose of our garbage (including Hudson, where DPW takes all of our blue trash bags and garbage from our public trash containers to the Greenport station) was treating the local environment around its largest garbage landfill like a cesspool.  This is our garbage company, essentially.