News & Updates

Along with trash, Seneca Meadows also trucks in clay soil used to help build the trash into mountains. In 2009, they wanted to mine this soil from a 122-acre parcel of land directly across the road from Waterloo residents. In opposition, Concerned Citizens of Seneca County held local meetings with hundreds in attendance, gathered more than 1400 petition signatures, participated with full party status at NYSDEC legislative and judicial hearings, but all to no avail until we filed suit versus both the Town of Waterloo as well as Seneca Meadows landfill over their unlawful zoning violation. Nine long years later, on Feb. 3, 2017, we won a 5-0 unanimous decision at the Appellate Court, and we won again on September 5, 2017, before the NY Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court – a step away from SCOTUS. As our attorney Doug Zamelis said, the Appellate Court ruling “was a knockout blow” to Seneca Meadows.

Awarded in 2010 by the U.S. EPA (one of only 76 of its kind awarded nationally) to Concerned Citizens of Seneca County in partnership with Citizen’s Environmental Coalition and Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition, Inc., the overall goal of which was to increase community involvement in, and understanding of, environmental, health and climate-change aspects of mega-landfills (with special focus on air quality).

For the air quality component of the grant, a MultiRae gas monitor was used to measure volatile organic carbons, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and combustible gases as STELS (short term exposure limits) in real time when people complained about landfill odors, with results compared to the standards shown below:

In 2013, Seneca Meadows Inc., the largest landfill in NYS, proposed constructing an Industrial Rail Yard at the busiest intersection in Seneca County for the purpose of receiving and staging $3.3B worth of trash by rail from New York City and beyond. They wanted to create permanent infrastructure for bringing trash by rail, thus portending an endless ocean of trash arriving for decades into the future well beyond their then current permit expiration date of 2017.

Concerned Citizens of Seneca County (CCSC) was prominent, once again, in fighting this threat by mounting an oppositional marketing campaign (example here) in close partnership with a local corporation, Waterloo Container, in what ultimately turned out to be a successful effort for our side.

Thanks to many people, including Dr. Paul Connett, but principally to the efforts of Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition, Inc. (now defunct), a waste gasification incinerator proposed by Casella Waste Systems at the Ontario County landfill was defeated that, if allowed to happen, would have (1) undermined recycling efforts by requiring a decades-long, minimum guaranteed flow of garbage to feed the trash burner; (2) burned vast quantities of resources that could be reused, recycled, or composted; (3) released toxic chemicals (contained in hazardous syngas) into our air and water, including dioxins, for which no “safe levels” exist, and (4) generated entirely new hazards, such as toxic ash, that would have needed to be landfilled with even greater caution. From legal filings to a sign-on support letter from Physicians for Social Responsibility, to a flyer ad, these are just a very few examples of what they did.