Islip Town faces deadline to cap landfill

Nearly two decades after the state ordered Islip Town to cap its Sayville landfill, the town is facing a deadline with a $16-million price tag Islip Supervisor Phil Nolan says the town can't afford.

The Lincoln Avenue Landfill was closed - but not capped - in the early 1980s. Since then, rainwater has percolated through, flushing contaminants into the groundwater.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, citing pollutants still leaking from the landfill, says the town must finally complete the job, which Nolan estimates will cost $16 million, and award a construction contract by March 2012.

But Nolan argues the damage has been done. Noting that state officials say the landfill poses no imminent threat to public health, he asks: Why cap it at all?

"This is a landfill that's pretty much run its course," he said. "It should have been capped at least two decades ago. You don't cap it when all this stuff is already out there. I don't like being handed a bill . . . for something that isn't necessary, in a climate where we're trying to maintain services at the town level."

In 2008, Nolan asked the DEC for a 10-year extension, arguing that the project would be "unnecessarily burdensome to the taxpayers of the Town of Islip in difficult fiscal times."

The agency gave him three years, extending the deadline for the project's completion to February 2013.

"Heavy metals, metal hydroxide, carbonates, sulfates, and chlorides will likely continue to leach out of the facility and into the underlying aquifer as long as rainwater is allowed to pond and percolate through the solid waste mass of the landfill, which is unlined," DEC regional director Peter Scully said in a letter to Nolan, concluding that "postponing the required capping for 10 years would not be appropriate."

The state comptroller is expected to offer the town advice on how to pay for the cap in an audit to be released soon.

Meanwhile, at its last meeting, the town board passed a resolution transferring $2.5 million to a reserve fund, which Nolan said could be used for the Lincoln Avenue project.

In 1983, the State Legislature passed the Long Island Landfill Law, which called for the closure of landfills to protect underground aquifers, the Island's sole source of drinking water.

DEC officials, who ordered the Lincoln Avenue Landfill capped in 1993, say though it poses no immediate threat to any public or private well, the landfill should be capped to prevent further spreading of the contaminants, which make groundwater unsuitable for drinking without treating.

"I know what the law says," Nolan said. "I'm asking the question: Where's a public health threat? Where's the cost-benefit analysis?"

The most recent groundwater tests at the site, conducted in May, detected ammonia, chloride, nitrate, sulfate, antimony, iron, manganese and sodium at concentrations exceeding state groundwater standards, DEC spokesman Bill Fonda said.