Preston, Plymouth want share of Pharsalia’s compensation for landfill
PHARSALIA – Five years worth of complaints from residents of Preston and Plymouth about a putrid smell coming from the Pharsalia Landfill has prompted a legal investigation into a benefits package that compensates Pharsalia only.
Chenango County Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford, directed the county’s attorney to look at the possibility of renegotiating the package to include the other towns that are impacted.
The move isn’t sitting well with Pharsalia Supervisor Dennis Brown, who is also the committee’s vice chairman.
“I understand the frustration that the other towns feel. Don’t think we don’t smell it, too,” he said.
In a deal made back in 1996, for the life expectancy of the landfill, Pharsalia receives $4 per ton of garbage taken in, or about $93,000 annually. Brown said the income has offset the town’s highway maintenance expenses and helped afford roadside clean-up.
A number of remedies at the landfill have attempted to control gases that escape, including capping, venting and flaring. Chenango County Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon has said that a lot of the smell is escaping from the sludges the landfill takes in.
At a meeting of the Public Works Committee last month, Preston Supervisor Peter Flanagan shared an article about a landfill near Pittsburgh that was sued for about $600,000 due to unresolved odor complaints. He said Plymouth Supervisor Jerry Kreiner had given him the article to present at the meeting.
Residents of Preston have often called Flanagan to complain about the foul odor, particularly on cool, crisp mornings in winter. Norwich Supervisor James McNeil said he had personally smelled it, and Smyrna Supervisor James Bays has directed Gibbon to pursue remedies.
When a special committee that was formed to site the landfill was first considering a benefits package for Pharsalia, Brown said he asked the supervisors of Preston and Plymouth whether they thought it would be fair.
“I asked them then if they had as much invested in the landfill as my town did, and they said, ‘No’,” he said.
The Pharsalia supervisor said his town board wouldn’t agree to open the contract to renegotiate it.
“When Pharsalia was chosen for the landfill, it was not good news. We didn’t want to become ‘the dump town.’ Then, because of our clays, we had to fight off the low-level radioactive waste dump people who wanted to give one of those to us. It was a real mess,” he said.
Wilcox referred the matter to County Attorney Richard Breslin: “We just need to see where we stand, what’s in the contract.”
Pharsalia, with 300 feet of clay beneath the ground before hitting bedrock, was deemed the most acceptable site for the dump out of a pool of 119 in Chenango County that were originally considered.
Chenango County Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford, directed the county’s attorney to look at the possibility of renegotiating the package to include the other towns that are impacted.
The move isn’t sitting well with Pharsalia Supervisor Dennis Brown, who is also the committee’s vice chairman.
“I understand the frustration that the other towns feel. Don’t think we don’t smell it, too,” he said.
In a deal made back in 1996, for the life expectancy of the landfill, Pharsalia receives $4 per ton of garbage taken in, or about $93,000 annually. Brown said the income has offset the town’s highway maintenance expenses and helped afford roadside clean-up.
A number of remedies at the landfill have attempted to control gases that escape, including capping, venting and flaring. Chenango County Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon has said that a lot of the smell is escaping from the sludges the landfill takes in.
At a meeting of the Public Works Committee last month, Preston Supervisor Peter Flanagan shared an article about a landfill near Pittsburgh that was sued for about $600,000 due to unresolved odor complaints. He said Plymouth Supervisor Jerry Kreiner had given him the article to present at the meeting.
Residents of Preston have often called Flanagan to complain about the foul odor, particularly on cool, crisp mornings in winter. Norwich Supervisor James McNeil said he had personally smelled it, and Smyrna Supervisor James Bays has directed Gibbon to pursue remedies.
When a special committee that was formed to site the landfill was first considering a benefits package for Pharsalia, Brown said he asked the supervisors of Preston and Plymouth whether they thought it would be fair.
“I asked them then if they had as much invested in the landfill as my town did, and they said, ‘No’,” he said.
The Pharsalia supervisor said his town board wouldn’t agree to open the contract to renegotiate it.
“When Pharsalia was chosen for the landfill, it was not good news. We didn’t want to become ‘the dump town.’ Then, because of our clays, we had to fight off the low-level radioactive waste dump people who wanted to give one of those to us. It was a real mess,” he said.
Wilcox referred the matter to County Attorney Richard Breslin: “We just need to see where we stand, what’s in the contract.”
Pharsalia, with 300 feet of clay beneath the ground before hitting bedrock, was deemed the most acceptable site for the dump out of a pool of 119 in Chenango County that were originally considered.
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