Speak Out Thurs. Sept. 7th 5:30 pm at the Dutchess County Legislature's Environmental Committee Meeting Dutchess County Legislative Chambers Sixth Floor, 22 Market Street Poughkeepsie [members of public allowed 3 min.'s each for public comment] Proposed Solid Waste Management Plan for Dutchess Unnecessarily Prolongs Incinerator Contract– County Should Contract Out Zero-Waste Consultant, Set Zero Waste Goal, Close County Incinerator(!) Click here for full text of resolution #2023159: https://www.dutchessny.gov//ConCalAtt/2/2023159.pdf (don't forget to at least skim through at least some of the dozens and dozens and dozens of email letters as public comment from pages 135 to 234 of that resolution document-- they were all promoting composting not incineration!) Em @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ https://www.thedailycatch.org/articles/landfill-in-the-sky-dutchess-countys-new-solid-waste-management-plan-leaning-heavily-on-incineration-heads-to-crucial-vote-thursday/ [excerpt here below; research/support links added] Landfill in the Sky? Dutchess County’s New Solid Waste Management Plan, Leaning Heavily on Incineration, Heads to Crucial Vote Thursday September 04, 2023 By Emily Sachar One of the most consequential environmental decisions in recent Dutchess County history, one that experts say could affect air quality for years to come, is coming to a crucial committee vote this week. Implicit in the discussion, experts say, is the county’s need to build a new incinerator. The battle lines are being drawn, as the county’s Division of Solid Waste Management has released a new waste management plan that says the county will need to lean on incineration, referred to as the “waste-to-energy” option, for years to come. While it does not propose a new incineration plant outright, the report says that landfills, the only other theoretical option given delays in implementing “green” alternatives, are out of the question. The Dutchess County Legislature’s Environmental Committee is slated to vote on the plan Thursday before it heads to the legislature for a full vote, now scheduled for next Monday. “Does Dutchess want to create a landfill in the sky filled with lead, particulates, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide?” asks Dr. Neil Seldman, Director of the Recycling Cornucopia Program at Zero Waste USA. “We shall see.” Environmentalists say the county must pivot away from incineration and increase recycling, composting, and reuse of materials towards a zero-waste goal. They point to other communities, including Detroit and Minneapolis, that have opted out of burning trash. A 2019 report by the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School in New York City ranked the existing Dutchess County incinerator, which at 35 years old is nearing the end of its useful life, as among the most polluting in the nation. https://hudsonvalleypost.com/report-hudson-valley-incinerator-one-of-top-polluters-in-u-s/ The number of incinerators operating in the U.S. has dropped from 187 in 1991 to 66 in mid-2023, according to Mike Ewall, Founder and executive director of the Energy Justice Network [and founder of Beyond Burning], a national support network for grassroots community groups fighting dirty energy and waste industry facilities such as coal power plants, ethanol plants, natural gas facilities, landfills, and incinerators. Seldman also argues that green initiatives, in lieu of incineration, could create 300 jobs in Dutchess County. Building a new incinerator also could be costly for taxpayers, he notes. New facilities would be funded by floating bonds, the interest payments for which would be borne by taxpayers, as would the operating costs of incinerators... Joel Tyner, a former Dutchess County Legislator from 2004 to 2019, is waging a battle from his new home in Portland, Ore. to push the county away from incineration. “The new plan, unfortunately, continues the status quo of unnecessarily burning almost half the county’s trash,” Tyner, who co-leads a local organization called Zero Waste Dutchess, said in an interview Monday with The Daily Catch. “It ignores the potential for Dutchess to truly get serious about recycling and composting towards zero waste.” Zero waste is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed and/or reused, Tyner said. The goal of the movement is to avoid sending trash to landfills. It is not yet certain how the Legislature’s Environmental Committee members will vote, though they are expected to approve the new plan, Tyner said. Nor is it clear how each of the 25 legislators, elected to two-year terms that all expire this year, will vote. The Legislature has 16 Republicans, one Conservative, and eight Democrats. Meanwhile, the topic has yet to catch fire with voters. Several leading environmentalists and politicians in Northern Dutchess County, among them Bard’s respected Chief Sustainability Officer Laurie Husted, Rhinebeck Village Trustee and composting expert Vanessa Bertozzi, and Rhinebeck Village Mayor Gary Bassett, all told The Daily Catch Monday that they are not current on the discussion of waste management at the county level. Tyner and others have been hosting Zoom meetings to inform voters, but no more than a dozen citizens have regularly participated, he said. Incineration is necessary, the county says, even as the current incineration facility is reaching the end of its useful life. Of the 50 trash incinerators in the United States that closed since 2000, their average age at closure was 25 years, according to federal data. Few incinerators last beyond a 40-year lifetime, experts say. In 2020, the Dutchess incinerator, privately run by a company called WIN Waste Innovations of Dutchess County [Wheelabrator], burned 151,099 tons of waste in Poughkeepsie and produced 53,521 tons of toxic ash, which was dumped in landfills in Ontario, Albany, and Chemung Counties, according to reports from Dutchess County prepared for the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Almost all waste generated in the county that is not recycled or composted – the residential and business waste of 290,000 residents – ends up at the incinerator. The term waste-to-energy is a euphemism, critics say, used to support incineration as a management technique. Dutchess County’s incinerator powers 9,000 homes a year with its burn plan. Environmentalists say, however, that toxic residues result. Data from 2018 provided to the DEC show that the county incinerator produced more than two tons of dioxins, said to be 140,000 times more toxic than mercury, and 272,523 pounds of nitrogen oxides, thought to trigger strokes and breathing problems. The county incinerator in Poughkeepsie also emits seven pounds of mercury annually, enough to poison 3,100 lakes of 20-acre size, according to the Energy Justice Network. It also puts 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the air each year. Health problems have been quantified in other cities and extrapolated to Dutchess County, explains Tyner. The county incinerator, he said, can be blamed for $10 million in health problems due to particulate emissions, a figure based on an NYU analysis of the Baltimore incinerator, which burns five times as much trash as the county incinerator in Poughkeepsie. https://www.beyondburning.org/incineration/thurston-wheelabrator-health-impacts-2017.pdf Experts who help communities move away from incineration say it’s not too late for Dutchess County to pivot. Seldman, who has advised cities around the country, said Dutchess should borrow a page from Ulster County, which he heralds as an ideal example in New York State of how to build a reliable, safe, air-friendly waste management plan. Ulster County has never had an incinerator. Westchester and Dutchess County are among the state’s worst counties for solid waste management, Seldman said. “To defeat these things, you need a well-mobilized citizen organization, and that is not present in Dutchess County,” said Seldman, who added that billions of dollars in federal subsidies are available now to help municipalities and counties. It’s not too late." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ So-- pls email the Co. Leg Democratic Caucus now-- before they come to a decision on how they're going to vote(!): yvaldessmith@dutchessny.gov, bratkins@dutchessny.gov, bkearney@dutchessny.gov, rjohnson@dutchessny.gov, gllaverias@dutchessny.gov, cbrendli@dutchessny.gov, kmunn@dutchessny.gov, npage@dutchessny.gov [I have already reached out to contact them on this multiple times myself; you may recall that Joe Ruggiero, in his campaign for County Exec four years ago, did not shy away from strongly opposing the county incinerator, noting its dangerous/toxic pollution: https://www.wamc.org/hudson-valley-news/2019-10-18/dutchess-county-executive-candidates-bring-differing-views-to-a-forum ] Of course, pls also share your thoughts with these folks too-- now(!): countyexec@dutchessny.gov, [County Exec William O'Neil] solidwastemgmt@dutchessny.gov [Deputy Solid Waste Comm. Kerry Russell] agency@dcrra.org [DCRRA Chair Wayne Nussbickel] - Dutchess County Legislature Republican Caucus - dsagliano@dutchessny.gov, mpolasek@dutchessny.gov, bgeller@dutchessny.gov, tkeith@dutchessny.gov, tdaquanni@dutchessny.gov, wtruitt@dutchessny.gov, jdmetzger@dutchessny.gov, dbolner@dutchessny.gov, lpaoloni@dutchessny.gov, jcavaccini@dutchessny.gov, dmchoul@dutchessny.gov, gpulver@dutchessny.gov, scaswell@dutchessny.gov, fgarito@dutchessny.gov, ehauser@dutchessny.gov, alansurman@optimum.net, dhouston@dutchessny.gov