New York City’s Trash is Stinking Up an Upstate Town

New York Public News Network | By Rosemary Misdary

An upstate landfill that receives a sizable amount of New York City’s waste is pushing plans to expand, but neighbors say the dump is already way too big and smelly.

Seneca Meadows landfill, situated between Seneca Falls and Waterloo, is stuck in legal limbo. A decade ago, local lawmakers ordered the landfill to close by Dec. 31, 2025. But the landfill’s owners, Texas-based Waste Connections, successfully challenged the order, and the case has been in litigation since.

In the meantime, Waste Connections has sought state approval to expand the size, height and lifetime of the rubbish pile. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation told the company in May its application was incomplete. The facility recently met a July 3 deadline to refile.

In the meantime, the landfill, which takes about 6% of its annual trash, or 75,000 tons, from New York City, continues to accept more garbage. It currently takes up approximately 400 acres and towers almost as high as the Statue of Liberty — including the pedestal — prompting some residents and local businesses to ponder their future in the area.

Locals describe a thick odor of rotten eggs and sewage stewing in the summer heat that sometimes makes it difficult to breathe.

“There’s no way to escape it,” said Waterloo resident Michelle Grillone. “It smells like when you open up your trash can after garbage has been sitting in it for five or six days and it’s 90 degrees out, and you were to put your head into your trash can.”

Grillone grew up in Seneca Falls, and most of her family remains nearby. She moved back after college, and said the garbage dump was barely noticeable nearly a decade ago.

Grillone said many of her neighbors have moved and others are mulling it, especially if the landfill gets the greenlight to expand. Her three children attend schools within several miles of the landfill. She said her sons experience dizziness, fatigue and nausea during class, and sometimes have to leave early. She attributes it to the stench.

“We’re out playing in our backyard, we’re swimming in our pool; we’re walking our dog and we are smelling it,” said local resident Sarah Mull, a mother of two children. “If it’s already this much of a problem now, I can’t even imagine what would happen if they expanded it and made it bigger.”

Local business owners are facing a similar dilemma. Waterloo Container, a family-owned business that manufactures glass beverage containers, is about 100 yards away from the landfill, according to employee Mark Pitifer.

Pitifer said there is litter coming off the site and the loud noise of trucks coming and going is unceasing.

“The odor is disgusting and unbearable,” Pitifer said. “ You look across the street, and it doesn’t look like the Finger Lakes tourism and wine region. It looks like the antithesis of that.”

Seneca Falls is in the Finger Lakes region, the state’s largest wine-producing area. The town is the birthplace of the women’s rights movement and the inspiration for the fictional town of Bedford Falls in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

There are 25 active landfills statewide, but Seneca Meadows’ rubbish pile takes in the most garbage, nearly 20% of the garbage that goes into statewide landfills, according to the most recently available public data from the Department of Environmental Conservation. The landfill was opened in 1983.

“It is monstrous. It is just this mountain. It looks like a mountain of garbage with these tiny, teeny little micro-sized trucks and cars on the top of it because it’s so large that it almost looks like they’re like toy vehicles on top of it,” Grillone said.

According to the landfill’s 2023 annual report, the most recent publicly available data from the Department of Environmental Conservation website, the rubbish on its site includes asbestos, contaminated soil, coal ash, industrial waste and sewage sludge. The site has 824 gas wells that produce more than 5.6 billion gallons of gas, which is mostly methane.

The site is also the state’s largest emitter of methane, according to aerial estimates published in a peer-reviewed science journal, Copernicus. The report recorded the facility’s greenhouse gas emissions rates as high as nearly 7,600 pounds per hour, more than four times greater than the site’s self-reported data. The landfill is subject to the state climate law, which requires an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The law further mandates a shift away from landfills as a form of solid waste disposal.

Waste Connections did not return multiple requests for comment.

The Seneca Meadows landfill employs just over 100 people, according to county data. The landfill also provides a steady flow of work for local hauling companies.

In 2021, the landfill’s owners published a study summarizing the benefits the area receives from its presence. It estimated $72 million in annual impact on the local community. The towns of Seneca Falls and Waterloo receive free solid waste disposal at the facility, which the report valued at $468,500 annually. The surrounding school districts get a tax benefit of nearly $500,000 from the landfill.

Without the financial benefits provided by the garbage dump, property taxes for the surrounding communities could rise as much as 74%, according to the company’s analysis.

“There are people that are very concerned about what our town will do when we don’t have the money from the landfill, but for most of us, that’s secondary,” Mull said. “Everybody is ready to see the end come.”

Department of Environmental Conservation spokesperson Lori Severino said if the department accepts a draft environmental impact statement and deems the permit applications complete, a public comment period will follow.

The battle for the landfill’s expansion is also playing out in the court system. In 2016, a law passed by the Seneca Falls Town Board mandated the landfill close permanently by Dec. 31, 2025. The landfill operators successfully sued. Local advocacy groups, including Seneca Lake Guardian, filed a lawsuit against Waste Connections and the Department of Environmental Conservation. The case is still pending.

Image: Seneca Meadows landfill. (Seneca Lake Guardian)