Brookhaven landfill closure likely to drive up costs, congestion on Long Island, experts say

The Brookhaven landfill opened in 1974, the year President Richard M. Nixon resigned and Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's career home run record. 

Since then, it has grown to a 270-foot-high mountain, stuffed with the residue of five decades of suburban trash. 

Town officials say the 192-acre landfill will close in 2027 or early 2028, when it is expected to run out of capacity. But the two-phase closure, which the town said will begin at the end of the year, likely will have a cascading effect, from increasing the costs of waste disposal to exacerbating the Island's traffic problems and worsening environmental pollution, local officials and waste industry experts told Newsday. 

Some Brookhaven residents say the closure of the facility on Horseblock Road is long overdue, and others say it offers a chance to boost recycling or switch waste removal from trucks to trains.   

"It could have a major impact on our wallets and on our economy on Long Island,” said Matthew Cohen, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Long Island Association, which represents the region's business community. "If we don’t do this the right way, there will be a significant impact on taxpayers and the environment.” 

The landfill's closure is expected to drive up the costs of municipal taxes and trash pickup, as well as construction and home remodeling, by forcing waste haulers and Reworld, the incinerator operator formerly known as Covanta, to ship trash and ash to landfills hundreds of miles away, officials told Newsday.

Potential cost increases are hard to pin down, officials say, because it is too soon to project price hikes at off-Island landfills and how they will affect Reworld, which operates Long Island's four waste incinerators. Reworld did not respond to Newsday's questions about potential increases.

“Any time you switch up things up ... residents and commercial businesses will have to bear the cost of what it costs to remove that garbage,” Babylon Supervisor Rich Schaffer said. 

Landfill's two-phase closure

The first part of the landfill closure is set for late December, when Brookhaven stops taking construction and demolition waste — known in the industry as C-and-D. About 60% of the 1.2 million tons of waste dumped in Brookhaven annually consists of C-and-D material.

The landfill will close completely by the end of 2028, when the town stops accepting ash from Reworld incinerators, Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico said Friday. A Newsday investigation last year found Reworld could not be sure ash it sent to the landfill more than a dozen years ago was nonhazardous. At least three lawsuits have been filed against Brookhaven by dozens of people associated with Frank P. Long Intermediate School in Bellport alleging they became sick from the landfill. Town officials have denied links between the illnesses and the landfill.

Long Island officials say their options are limited, because there are few places where it is both safe and legal to dispose trash. Construction of new Long Island dumps was banned 40 years ago. 

“The problem with Long Island is it’s a cul-de-sac," said former North Hempstead solid waste commissioner Robert Lange. "Either you have to deal with things on the Island or you have to ship it off the Island.”

Dozens of Long Island landfills closed more than three decades ago as most municipalities switched to incineration to comply with a 1983 state law that closed all but a few municipal dumps in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Here are some of the anticipated effects of the landfill's closure, based on interviews with multiple officials, experts and environmental advocates.

Shipping to off-Island landfills

Most construction waste will be shifted to the privately owned 110 Sand Co. on Spagnoli Road in Melville, which will be the last remaining C-and-D landfill on Long Island when Brookhaven closes, according to Will Flower, vice president of West Babylon-based Winters Bros. Waste Systems.

State records show the landfill is allowed to take up to 6,000 tons per day — or 2.15 million tons annually — of concrete, wood, steel, sand and other construction material. 

In a February 2022 report filed with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, 110 Sand officials said the landfill — in an industrial section of Melville about a half-mile from State Route 110 — has sufficient capacity to last until 2049. 

Attempts to reach 110 Sand officials were unsuccessful. 

Haulers who don't use 110 Sand will have only one alternative — shipping trash to eight landfills in Pennsylvania, Ohio and upstate Seneca Falls, said Flower, of Winters Bros., which plans to use several of those facilities to deposit construction debris. The nearest of those dumps is about 110 miles from Long Island, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The farthest is in Fostoria, Ohio, almost 600 miles away.

Passing fuel costs to customers

Shipping to off-Island landfills will drive up the cost of waste disposal because of additional fuel consumption and tolls, according to a 2021 Brookhaven Town study.

Current E-ZPass tolls for a seven-wheeled tractor-trailer are $39.98 each way on New York City bridges such as the Throgs Neck and Verrazano-Narrows, and $128.45 to $166.90 one way reentering New York from New Jersey on Port Authority bridges such as the George Washington and Goethals spans.

A gallon of diesel fuel averaged $4.25 in the New York City region on Thursday, compared with $3.59 for regular gas, according to the AAA website.

Contractors will pass those costs on to customers — as much as $50 to $75 per ton of construction debris, said Mike Florio, chief executive officer of the Long Island Builders Institute, a lobbying group representing 792 construction companies.

“Bottom line, it’ll be bad," he said. “Everyone’s going to pay a higher price for removal.”

On Long Island, seven towns — including Hempstead and North Hempstead and Suffolk's five western townships — use Reworld incinerators; the five East End towns, the Town of Oyster Bay and the cities of Long Beach and Glen Cove ship trash to off-Island landfills. 

Brookhaven's 2021 report estimated that Reworld, which currently pays no tolls to go to Brookhaven, would pay about $3.8 million in tolls annually. Fuel for about 19,444 trucks annually, each carrying about 18 tons, would drive those costs even higher, the report noted. The report was commissioned by Brookhaven officials when they considered building an ash-only landfill next to the current landfill. That plan was rejected as too expensive.

“All those communities that have their trash incinerated are going to see their expenses skyrocket," said John Cameron, a Woodbury engineer and chair of the Long Island Regional Planning Council, which studies policy issues such as taxes, the environment and the Island's infrastructure needs. 

Reworld did not directly answer questions from Newsday about its plans when the landfill closes.

In a statement, Reworld spokesman David Chauvin said the company "continues to work with these municipalities and regional leaders to investigate alternatives." The company has said it is exploring technologies that convert ash into bricks and other construction material.

Impact on roads, environment

When the landfill fully closes, it will take about 60,000 trucks a year — or 164 trips a day — to remove waste that goes to the landfill and ship it out of state, according to estimates by Winters Bros. 

“The roads right now can’t handle it," Cameron said. "They can’t handle an increase.”

Diesel emissions have been linked to asthma, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and numerous health and medical organizations. 

Dr. Ken Spaeth, medical director of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Center at Northwell, said Long Island air is "generally cleaner" than it was decades ago because of tougher federal and state emissions standards. But diesel fumes remain dangerous, he said.

“Exhaust is comprised of a lot of different types of pollutants," Spaeth said. “If there’s someone who already has lung issues, that can exacerbate [existing] problems.”

'The future of moving waste'

The closure has sparked a mini-industry of new waste-transfer station projects that would ship construction debris off the Island by train, including facilities in Medford and Brentwood.

Panico told Newsday using trains is "the future of moving waste."

“Trucking on this island is neither economically or environmentally responsible," he said. "This island is becoming more and more and more crowded.”

Winters Bros. has proposed a plant in Yaphank, and Smithtown developer Toby Carlson has proposed a Kings Park facility. Both have faced local opposition.

The Yaphank proposal is opposed by local residents, the state NAACP and its Brookhaven chapter, and Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

Brookhaven NAACP president Georgette Grier-Key argues the Yaphank plant is not needed, saying the Medford and Brentwood plants will process a combined 1,031,400 tons of construction waste annually, more than enough to replace the 660,000 tons deposited each year at the landfill.

“What’s the crisis? Where’s the crisis?" said Grier-Key, of Bellport. “We don’t need any more solutions. Brentwood and Medford have it.”

She said the Brookhaven landfill should be closed "as soon as possible," citing high rates of asthma and other respiratory conditions among mostly minority residents.

Another landfill opponent, John McNamara, of Rocky Point, said Long Island officials should adopt "zero waste" policies that cut trash disposal and energy consumption, citing efforts in Maryland and elsewhere to incorporate solar power and other "green energy" technologies into public buildings.

“Many municipalities are far ahead of us. ... We’ve got to change our habits, said McNamara, 77, a retired religious education director. “Closing the landfill is an opportunity for us to say it’s time to go in a different direction.”

Flower said the Yaphank plant is needed to keep up with Long Island's future waste disposal needs, adding one train car can carry as much trash as five trucks.

“Every day we move waste by rail. About 9% of all the waste that leaves Long Island is leaving by rail,” Flower said. "What we’re saying is that the waste problem on Long Island is so great that you need both trucks and rail to solve the problem.”

Such facilities would have minimal impact on commuter trains because freight trains operate at night or during off-peak times during the day, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman David Steckel said. Freight rail is operated by New York & Atlantic Railway Co,, which supports the trash-by-rail plans, spokesman John Gleeson said.

Gleeson said rail "remains the best option for Long Island’s long-term economic future."

None of Reworld's four plants — in Westbury, Ronkonkoma, Smithtown and Babylon — is equipped to move ash by rail. Brookhaven's 2021 study estimated it would cost the company $45.9 million to build a new rail-based incinerator, including the costs of purchasing rail cars and laying new tracks. 

Reworld spokeswoman Nicolle Robles declined to say whether the company is considering a rail-based plant.

"The only thing we can tell you at this point is that we’re exploring a number of different options," Robles said in an email.

Finding a 'viable alternative'

Some officials and environmentalists say closing the Brookhaven landfill should spur Long Island to boost recycling.

About 25% to 30% of household waste on Long Island is recycled, according to Stony Brook University professor David Tonjes, who is leading a team of researchers in a state-funded $4.25 million study of recycling systems statewide.

Some officials have sought to improve glass and plastics recycling by developing new markets for those items.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment in Farmingdale, said there will be "no viable alternative except to reuse the ash,” which can be used in concrete and asphalt mixtures for road and construction projects. 

"It’s very stable and very solid — probably more stable than the roads we’re building now," she said.

The view from Fostoria

Talk of sending more trash nearly 600 miles to the landfill in her town of 13,000 people "feels very unfair," said Fostoria, Ohio, resident Ashley Stahl.

Stahl, 34, is part of efforts opposing plans to nearly double the 51-acre facility, about 107 miles west of Cleveland. The landfill is among those identified by Long Island officials as likely destinations for waste after the Brookhaven facility closes.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based waste disposal conglomerate WIN Waste Innovations, which owns the Fostoria landfill, did not respond to requests for comment. 

“It’s just a disaster all around," Stahl said, citing concerns such as contaminated drinking water and leaks from idling railroad cars.

"It just seems wild to me that people don’t want landfills in their states. What makes them think we want it in our state?”

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.