State extends deadline for Brookhaven landfill cleanup report

State environmental conservation officials have given Brookhaven Town an additional three months to recommend cleanup plans for a miles-long toxic plume emanating from the town landfill.

The Department of Environmental Conservation set a new May 1 deadline for finishing the report, which is expected to outline plans for cleaning up the landfill after groundwater testing in 2023 discovered so-called "forever chemicals" in the plume, which extends about 4 miles from Brookhaven hamlet south toward Bellport Bay.

The DEC last summer ordered the town to complete the study by Feb. 1.

The potential cleanup options must include closing the landfill, the DEC said in a July 31, 2025, letter to Brookhaven officials. The 192-acre landfill, which primarily accepts incinerated household trash and automotive waste, is expected to shut down in 2028 when it runs out of capacity, town officials have said.

The new deadline was set at the request of town officials, DEC spokesperson Aphrodite Montalvo said Thursday in an email. The town must submit an interim report, called a Corrective Measures Assessment, by April 15, she said.

Brookhaven spokesman Drew Scott said a state-mandated community meeting that was to have been held Jan. 15 at Brookhaven Town Hall to discuss the plume has been postponed "while outstanding issues continue to be reviewed." The meeting has not been rescheduled, he said.

Brookhaven "remains engaged" with the DEC "on matters related to the historic landfill plume and corrective measures assessment," Scott said Thursday in an email. He said the town "will share updates as information becomes available."

Lynne Maher, a Brookhaven resident who lives near the plume, called the postponement "frustrating and disappointing." The retired nurse practitioner, 69, noted the meeting originally was to have been held in December but also was postponed.

“I’m surprised,” Maher, a member of the grassroots Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group, which has called for the landfill's closure, said Friday in a phone interview. "I don’t really understand the delay, and I don’t think I’m going to get an answer.”

Brookhaven in late 2024 initially blamed the plume on other industrial properties in the area and said in a report there was "no discernible [chemical] plume emanating from the landfill." That report was rejected last year by the DEC, which ordered a new study.

A new report prepared by a town consultant and released last summer stated the landfill is a "contributing source" of toxic forever chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, along with 1,4-dioxane. Both have been linked to a range of health issues including cancer, Newsday previously reported.

Residents who live within 500 feet of the plume were sent a letter from the town in August outlining the report's findings, officials said at the time.

Town officials have said the plume poses little if any threat to homeowners because almost all residential properties near its path are connected to public water systems.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment in Farmingdale, said delaying the report was "really unwarranted and just causes the contamination to spread even more.”

“The town’s had years to assess the plume," Esposito said Friday in a phone interview. "Every delay means the plume is moving further and doing more damage."

“It shouldn’t be this hard to address what really is a modest plume," Esposito said. "The sooner that they get started, the sooner it will get done.”

The town's five-year state landfill operating permit is set to expire on July 11, DEC records show. Town officials have said they are seeking an extension to keep the landfill open at least two more years.