Dunn landfill debacle’s origins stretch back 20 years

I was at my grandson’s track meet at the Rensselaer High School when I noticed the change. Past the school grounds, what had been a ravine just a year earlier was now a huge mountain. The Dunn Gravel Mine had become the Dunn landfill, one of the largest construction and demolition landfills in the state.

In addition to the dust, smells and noise, the landfill causes heavy truck traffic on Partition Street, a narrow urban residential street. I found myself asking, “Who put such a large landfill next to a school?” And “How did so much truck traffic wind up on a residential street?”

The answers took me back almost two decades, to when I was a member of the North Greenbush Town Board.

Back then, we noticed that the state Department of Environmental Conservation was taking an expanded role as lead agency in issuing permits for gravel mining projects, while pushing aside local governments in the review process.

This was a big deal in Rensselaer County, which sits atop several veins of high-quality gravel. The review of mining projects varied widely from town to town, with some municipalities having elaborate rules for the extraction of natural resources and others not even having zoning laws. To complicate matters, some mines stretched across several towns. Obtaining approvals usually required hiring attorneys and engineers, with no guarantee of success.

The change at DEC, I learned, stemmed from a state Budget Division directive to all state agencies to either lay off a significant number of their staff members or find another way to raise money. Nobody wanted to do layoffs, of course, so a number of creative solutions were devised to tap more federal funds or pass along expenses to local governments.

DEC took a different approach: It dramatically increased the fees paid for gravel mining, air or water quality, and landfill permits while expanding its role as lead agency for their review.

For applicants, these increased fees were a bargain. Gravel mine operators no longer faced a complex array of local regulations that were expensive to deal with. Instead, DEC took a more regional or statewide approach. If we wanted good roads, the gravel would have to come from somewhere. Local issues became less significant to DEC staff when considering applications from the people whose money had saved their jobs.

The new arrangement appeared to work for everybody — the Budget Division with the revenue, DEC staff with the jobs that were saved, mine operators and other permit applicants with the easier path to obtain approvals. What could possibly go wrong?

Fast forward almost 20 years and the Dunn Mine, operating under a DEC permit, has become the Dunn landfill, operating under a DEC permit. The abstract numbers on a permit application have turned into dust, smells, noise and truck traffic for the residents of Rensselaer.

A few miles north, in Cohoes, a similar controversy has developed over a DEC air quality permit that allows Norlite to burn toxic chemicals next to a public housing project. Like Rensselaer, Cohoes has limited technical, legal and financial resources to fight a multi-million-dollar corporation applying to renew a DEC permit. One can imagine a different outcome if an applicant tried to locate a landfill next to a school in Niskayuna or a toxic waste-burning kiln next to a residential complex in Clifton Park.

It has been almost two decades since the Budget Division issued the directive to avoid layoffs by finding ways to replace funds. The reasons for that directive no longer exist, but its impact lives on. The conflict of interest created by permit applicants financing the salaries of the staff reviewing those applications had real consequences for the citizens of Rensselaer and Cohoes.

Now both the Dunn and Norlite permits are coming up for renewal by DEC. Neither the relative wealth of the surrounding community nor the money paid by the permit applicants should be deciding factors in those decisions.