Brookhaven landfill: Town seeks 5-year operating extension, drawing residents' ire

Brookhaven is asking state regulators to approve a five-year extension of the town's landfill operating permit as the town moves to complete the oft-delayed shutdown of the lucrative but troubled dump.

Town officials and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the latter which is weighing the town's request for a new permit that would expire in 2031, say the landfill is expected to close when it runs out of room for deposits of trash, primarily ash from Long Island incinerators operated by New Jersey-based Reworld.

At the current pace, the landfill is expected to reach capacity between July and September 2028, Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico said in recent interviews, but that could change if there is a "dramatic dropoff" or marked increase in the volume of ash coming from the incinerators, he added.

In a statement, DEC officials said the timing of closing the landfill is up to the town and is based on capacity limits set by the DEC, adding that permits issued by the agency typically do not specify when a facility will close. 

DEC officials said the town would be required to complete covering, or capping, the landfill within a year after it closes.

Brookhaven's landfill operating permit expires July 11. In a statement, the DEC said it is "actively reviewing" Brookhaven's extension application, which was submitted on March 1, 2024.

The 52-year-old landfill in Brookhaven hamlet generates tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue that helps the town defray its solid-waste disposal costs, but it also has raised concern among environmentalists, drawn the ire of state and federal regulators, and soured relations between the town and many of its residents.

Solid-waste experts say the DEC is almost certain to approve a new permit, noting the agency has approved a series of five-year extensions to keep the landfill running in recent years.

The DEC said in a statement that five-year permits are "a common permit duration in many instances," adding the agency sometimes issues permits that are valid up to 10 years.

Closing the 192-acre landfill will be a milestone event in efforts to change solid-waste policy on Long Island, taking away one of two repositories for ash generated by the region's waste-to-energy incineration plants.

But experts and even some landfill critics warn that the landfill's demise could bring unwelcome consequences, including higher taxes in towns across the Island, steeper waste disposal costs, and a marked increase of truck traffic on the Island's already congested roads. 

Permitted to take tons of ash daily

Besides its own garbage, Brookhaven directly or indirectly processes most of Long Island's trash through Reworld, which burns waste from the towns of Hempstead, Islip, Smithtown, Huntington and North Hempstead. 

Panico said Brookhaven has been preparing for steep revenue losses when the landfill closes by taking steps such as the 2024 decision to stop taking construction waste from private haulers. That move caused a 50% drop in landfill revenues.

“Everything in waste management on Long Island is linked by contracts and by geography because we are an island," Panico said. “Every government that deals with municipal solid waste — they can expect to see price increases that reveal not only increased costs, but also the uncertainty in the market."

But some residents say they are fed up with what they see as endless delays in closing the landfill. They say they won't believe it will close until it actually does.

“Until it happens, it doesn’t mean anything, what they say,” said Monique Fitzgerald, a Bellport civic activist and member of the anti-landfill Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group, or BLARG. 

“They’re not planning properly," said Fitzgerald, also climate justice director for the nonprofit Long Island Progressive Coalition. "According to [Brookhaven], they have 2½ years left, and what is the plan?”

The landfill is one of only two on Long Island that receive ash from Reworld plants. The other, run by the Town of Babylon, exclusively takes ash from Reworld's West Babylon incinerator. Babylon's landfill is expected to close within a decade, Newsday has reported.  

About three-quarters of the Brookhaven landfill is shuttered and capped after reaching capacity limits in five sections, or cells, built to store waste since the landfill opened in 1974, Panico said.

The last section — Cell 6 — is allowed under the current operating permit to take up to 1,500 tons of ash daily, or 537,000 tons of ash annually. Last year the landfill received 324,812 tons of ash from Reworld's Westbury, Ronkonkoma and Smithtown incinerators, Panico said.

'There isn't an alternative'

Experts say that in spite of state efforts to encourage Brookhaven and other Long Island municipalities to reduce their dependence on landfills, there's practically no chance the DEC will reject the town's request for a new permit.

“Only because there isn’t an alternative,” said Will Flower, a retired vice president at West Babylon trash hauler Winters Bros. Waste Systems.

Winters Bros., a subsidiary of solid-waste giant WM, formerly Waste Management, operates the town's recycling plant and previously shipped construction debris to the landfill before the town stopped taking that material in December 2024.

“Managing solid waste is a big cost item for municipalities,” Flower said in a phone interview last month. “Even after the landfill closes, there’s still a significant amount of waste that has to be managed every day and there are significant costs with managing that waste.”

The landfill closure is part of the town's ongoing discussions with Reworld, Panico said, adding it is up to the company to determine how it will dispose of ash.

He said the town's current contract with Reworld "goes away" when the landfill closes, but he added, "We still intend to send [waste] to Reworld to be incinerated for power."

Experts have said Reworld has limited options. Reworld's predecessor, Covanta, had pilot programs to convert ash into bricks and road material.

In a statement, Reworld spokesman Jake Mendlinger said the company is "actively exploring options," including "the beneficial reuse of ash." He added, "Planning for sustainable, long-term ash management remains a priority, and this work will continue as the landfill winds down."

Millions in revenue for town

In closing the landfill, Brookhaven will shut off a cash spigot that has helped limit the impact of waste disposal costs on town taxpayers. 

Under a decades-old trash-for-ash deal negotiated with Covanta, the town ships trash to incinerators in exchange for taking ash from the plants. The deal effectively cuts Brookhaven's solid-waste disposal costs.

Last year the town paid Reworld $23.3 million to ship household waste to its Westbury incinerator, Panico said, while Reworld paid the town a total of $23.5 million to dump ash at the landfill. Total revenues from tipping fees — what the town charges for Reworld and other customers to dump waste at the facility — were $29.1 million.

The town's $5.8 million landfill profit helped pay for other waste management expenses, town budget records show.

When the landfill closes, Brookhaven's lost revenue — combined with increased disposal costs for municipalities — ultimately will be borne by taxpayers, said Woodbury engineer John Cameron, chair of the Long Island Regional Planning Council.

“That's just another tax," he said in a phone interview. "You talk about Long Island becoming unaffordable, it’s going to become even less affordable.”

Some experts fear that the economic impact of closing the landfill, including pressure from neighboring towns, could force Brookhaven to keep it open beyond its current expected closure date.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment in Farmingdale, said the DEC, at Brookhaven's request, could set increased capacity limits that would extend the landfill's life span — and keep it generating revenue for beleaguered town coffers.

“My concern is [Brookhaven officials] are going to ask the DEC to continue to stay open and request a modified permit — in other words, they request to dump even more ash than they are permitted to,” Esposito said in a phone interview. “One thing we are watching is that they don’t make a quiet deal to stay open. ... It wouldn’t be shocking for all the towns to get together to ask the DEC to expand the ash permit.”

Panico denied plans to keep the landfill open beyond 2028, dismissing such speculation as "political nonsense" that "has no bearing in reality."

Earlier closing dates delayed

Brookhaven has set closing dates for the landfill several times before in recent years, only to push them back.

Town officials had said the landfill could close in 2024, then 2025, then 2027 and then 2028. Officials blamed COVID-19 for the earlier delays, saying the pandemic reduced the amount of construction and demolition waste coming into the dump.

The frequent delays have sown distrust among some residents, environmentalists and solid- waste experts.

Lynne Maher, a Brookhaven hamlet resident and BLARG member, said neighbors buy "cartons and cartons" of bottled water because of concern about drinking water. She was frustrated in January when the town postponed a community meeting to discuss a 4-mile-long toxic plume generated by the landfill. The meeting, mandated by state officials as part of efforts to clean up the plume, was rescheduled for March 27, Panico said.

“You think that the people who you elect are concerned about the health of their constituents," Maher said last month in a phone interview. "You don’t get that feeling when you have to pull teeth for that information.”

But experts say Brookhaven and other municipalities face a rude awakening when the landfill closes. For all its problems, including state odor violations and the town's 2020 agreement to pay $299,166 to settle federal Clean Air Act violations, the landfill has played a vital role in Long Island's solid-waste management system, they say.

“It always comes down to the fact that Brookhaven has always enjoyed a tremendous asset for a long period of time,” Flower, the former Winters Bros. executive, said. “Not only did [the landfill] provide a cost-effective solution for waste that was generated in the town of Brookhaven, but it also provided revenue from [waste] that was deposited at the landfill from outside of Brookhaven as well."