In an effort to keep a city landfill up and running for as long as possible, the city of Albany presented another plan to expand the Rapp Road dump around the Pine Bush Preserve.
On Tuesday, Sept. 19, General Services Commissioner Bill Bruce unveiled a plan to expand the Rapp Road landfill eastward into land owned by the state.
The city of Albany recently dropped a controversial plan to expand west into dedicated land in the Pine Bush Preserve. The new proposal would add to the landfill between 2.7 acres and 6.2 acres of land acquired by the state in 2000 after it gave a developer 19 acres in the Harriman State Office Building Campus in exchange for 45.8 acres of Pine Bush land.
This is the city’s third landfill expansion proposal in a year.
Earlier in the year, the City Council decided not to remove the dedicated status of up to 12 acres of land in the Pine Bush Preserve to expand the dump, which is rapidly running out of space.
This is a much better alternative, said Christopher Hawver, executive director of the Albany Pine Bush Commission. `It is great? No. Is it better? Absolutely.`
Unlike the last proposal, the land that would be taken is not dedicated to the Pine Bush as `forever wild.`
`It is considered protected, but it is not dedicated to the preserve,` Hawver said.
One of the objections to the last plan was that removing the dedicated status of any land in the Pine Bush could result in a slippery slope leading to further expansion of the dump into the environmentally protected area.
`That was, in my opinion, a really bad precedent to set forth,` said Hawver.
Although it never ended up happening, an announcement from Gov. George Pataki’s office following the 2000 land swap deal said `the Pine Bush parcel, which borders Rapp Road, will be dedicated to the existing Pine Bush Preserve.`
When the state acquired the 45.8 acres, then executive director of the Albany Pine Bush Commission, Willie Janeway, said, `The expansion greatly enhances our efforts to protect this unique and endangered environment.`
`Someone appears to have forgotten,` said Lynne Jackson of Save the Pine Bush, an environmental group. `I feel betrayed.`
As it stands now, city officials suspect the dump could be filled by 2009. The hope is the current expansion would add an additional seven or eight years to the life of the landfill.
Jackson said she thinks the city needs to stop expanding the landfill and make an effort to find alternatives.
`They cannot keep taking land out of the preserve,` said Jackson, who said the city needs to re-evaluate and take a proactive approach in its garbage collection methods to reduce the amount of waste dumped in the landfill each year. Jackson said she recognizes that if Albany reduces the amount of garbage it hauls, city coffers would suffer.
`We need a rational approach to solid waste and a method for the city to make up the revenue they’ll lose not being in the garbage business,` said Jackson.
The city earns about 10 percent of its annual income from trash-hauling revenue generated by dumping in the landfill.
Jackson suggested executing additional land swaps ` giving city land in exchange for pieces of Pine Bush preserve owned by commercial business ` that would ultimately increase commercial tax bases within the city. She also said the city could encourage the revitalization of downtown areas through realistic, low-interest loans to buyers that in turn could repopulate vacant properties in the city. Another of Jackson’s ideas was using renewable sources of power such as solar, wind or tidal to reduce its dependence on traditional power.
`What bothers me,` said Jackson, `is that the city is not being proactive about this problem.`
The Albany Common Council added an amendment to a resolution passed in the spring ensuring that this would be the last expansion at the Rapp Road location.
The amendment does not satisfy Jackson, who said the council had made similar proclamations in the past.
`The city simply breaks its promises,` said Jackson.
Hawver said the Pine Bush Commission would work with the Department of Environmental Conservation and the city of Albany in the hope that this would be the final expansion of the landfill.“