Babylon landfill group goes after dumpers

The eight companies that settled a Superfund dumping case at the now-closed Babylon landfill want other dump users to pony up.

The companies, which include Fortune 500 giants such as Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, demanded a $50,000 settlement with each of the villages of Babylon, Amityville and Lindenhurst in the Town of Babylon and a number of local businesses.

A lawyer for the eight companies, known as the Babylon Landfill Joint Defense Group, says the group is making the demand -- in lieu of litigation -- to recoup legal costs and administrative fees it incurred when it settled with the state in February for $3.4 million. That amount is well below the $22 million the state paid to clean and close the landfill in the early 1990s but the state attorney general's office said it was fair.

"The settlement reflects the best possible outcome for the people of New York," wrote Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, in an email.

Trying to recoup costs in this way is a common maneuver under the state Superfund statute, said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University. Virtually any party that ever used a Superfund-designated site is potentially responsible for cleanup costs, he said.

State environmental protection agencies typically pursue only a few larger parties, which, in turn, go after a wider group of smaller parties, "and on and on, depending on how much is at stake," Gerrard said.

Justis said he wasn't demanding "these parties pay anywhere close to the amount of money that our clients paid," and that his figures were based partly on estimates of how much waste each party dumped at the landfill.

But attorneys for the three villages describe it differently. "Nothing less than an organized shakedown," Lindenhurst village attorney Jerry Glass said.

Glass said a letter from the Babylon defense group says the village must pay $50,000 by April 30 to avoid being sued and "incurring significant transaction or any litigation costs."

Anthony Daniels, who owns a Lindenhurst truck repair company, received a similar letter.

"I know I didn't do anything bad," said Daniels, owner of Aptico, who added that he can't pay. "We're lucky to be keeping our head above water . . . They're trying to draw blood out of rocks."

Amityville and Babylon village attorneys said they had not decided how to respond.

"For a municipality -- for any municipality -- an extra 50 grand is hard to come by these days," said Glass. "Our position is that we're not going to go down without a fight."