MORETOWN, Vt. -
The Agency of Natural Resources says it does not intend to recertify Moretown Landfill for Cell 2 and 3, essentially a sentence for closing the landfill soon.
Not long ago Moretown Landfill Inc. was planning on expanding its facility but the Agency of Natural Resources said the landfill first needed to deal with noxious offsite odors.
ANR requested that Advanced Disposal, the parent company of Moretown Landfill Inc. come up with a plan to reduce offsite odors. The company submitted a proposal nearly two weeks ago. The ANR reviewed the proposals and, in a letter to Moretown Landfill's Regional Operations Manager "find them to be inadequate and not proportionate to the serious odor problems that have resulted from the facility design and operations."
The letter notified the landfill representative of the "Agency of Natural Resources' intent to deny Moretown Landfill's application for solid waste facility recertification of Cells 2 and 3."
"They told us they've tried everything so what now would be different?" Secretary of the ANR Deb Markowitz told us.
Markowitz says the offsite odor problem near Moretown Landfill can't be controlled and the 250 offsite odor complaints since August 2011 is just an example of the problem.
The "intent" to not recertify the landfill means that the ANR has not issued its final decision yet. That date will be March 8th, 2013. Starting December 21st there will be thirty days available for the public to comment on the issue followed by 45 days for the Agency to analyze and review the comments.
We wondered how soon after the March 8th deadline could it shut down.
"Well it needs to go through the shutdown process at that point and understand that the landfill's full so they really will be full by then," Secretary Markowitz said.
We reached out to the landfill's regional operations manager, but no one was available to talk. Parent company Advanced Disposal did issue a statement noting it's "committed to a clean Vermont and implementing the multitude of improvements to the Moretown Landfill as proposed to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources to address concerns over odor issues."
Regional vice president Dave Lavender also pointed out that it only recently took over operations of the landfill.
"Some unfortunate decisions were made by the previous operators, which have led to the site's current odor issues and state's concerns. However, Advanced Disposal is working aggressively to remedy these issues and prove that the landfill can and will be operated in compliance with the law."
We were curious if there was any chance the ANR could reverse its opinion by March 8, 2013.
"Well I think it's unlikely. We have a 30 day comment period for a reason though and that's to get more information. So we don't prejudge that.
We also wanted to know if Vermonters will have a place to put their trash if the landfill does shutdown.
"It shouldn't be an issue," Markowitz said.
She pointed out that there are three currently permitted landfills in the state just waiting for investors and to be built. Markowitz said that if Moretown Landfill did close it could be an incentive to some investors to bid in because there'd be more trash available.
There's also the landfill in Coventry that Markowitz says has excess capacity.
