The ongoing failure of New York’s solid waste program dates at least as far back as 1988 when the State Solid Waste Management Policy was entered into NYS Environmental Conservation Law, Title 1, Section 27-0106.
It reads:
In the interest of public health, safety and welfare, and in order to conserve energy and natural resources, the following priority list was enacted by the State of New York:
This policy, after consideration of economic and technical feasibility, shall guide the solid waste management programs and decision of the department (NYSDEC) and other state agencies and authorities.
Please note that landfilling is listed as a last resort.
What has happended instead, however, is that the NYSDEC has chosen to prioritize and incentivize landfilling over reduction, reuse, and recycling because it is more profitable to fill land with garbage than to implement sustainable practices like waste reduction and recycling.
That means the NYSDEC has failed to
Instead, the only solutions the DEC has offered are landfills and WTE facilities, which is to say enormous profits for huge, multi-national corportations at the expense of the health of citizens and the environment.