FRESH KILLS LANDFILL CONFERENCE: CLOSURE AND BEYOND


ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS


Anne Marie Alonso - Reducing the City's waste burden
The Council on the Environment of New York City (a citizen's organization in the Mayor's Office) has conducted a waste composition and prevention study project at 15 pilot sites to research and document opportunities for waste prevention in the workplace and school. Ten to fifty percent of the organizations' waste proved needless and could be eliminated cost-effectively. A broad range of strategies has been successfully implemented and has provided economic benefits in purchasing, labor, and disposal savings. The studies have provided insights on waste generation and prevention applicable to City serviced agencies, institutions, and residences.

Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm - Summary of Fresh Kills Task Force Report - The City's Point of View
 Brief description of Task Force membership and process, overview of the recommendations submitted by the Task Force and the City's response.

Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm - Where do we go from here?
 Summary of the steps either underway or proposed by the City in response to the Fresh Kills Task Force and the attendent budget allocations in fiscal year 1997 through 2001.

Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm - Task Force's Recommendation and City's Response - An Explanation
Background on the development of this specific recommendation and the expectation of the City when choosing to implement this recommendation.

Randal Coburn & Keith Lashway - Empire State Development Corp. Recycling Investment Program
Overview of program: 1) investment categories, 2) investment priorities, 3) eligibility, 4) cost sharing, and 5) expected outcomes.

Bud Colden - Waste reduction through waste prevention and recycling
 New York State Law (Solid Waste Management Act of 1988) provided a firm commitment to the concepts of preventing waste and for dramatically expanding efforts to recover materials for recycling. This legislation directed the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to initiate programs that would effectuate a fifty percent reduction in solid waste through waste prevention and recycling initiatives. The DEC has undertaken Statewide initiatives to reduce the amount of waste requiring disposal and vastly increasing the amount of material recycled. Many of the initiatives instituted in New York State, by State and local governments and businesses are actions that can be replicated in New York City. The foundation laid in the Fresh Kills Task Force Report provides a real opportunity for implementation of these initiatives in the City. These initiatives, and what it takes to make them sustainable, will be discussed.

Donald Clark - Stability modeling for the Fresh Kills landfill
Limit equilibrium analysis and finite element analysis are two numerical methods commonly used in slope stability analyses. Both were originally formulated for use on naturally occurring soils and soil fills. The accuracy of these methods may be affected when they are applied to municipal solid waste landfills. The primary reason for this is differences in the material properties of the refuse. How these material properties affect each method is presented with respect to the Fresh Kills landfill and municipal solid waste landfills in general. Inherent inaccuracies of each method will also be presented.

Ben Friedman - Water and rail versus truck: the economic and environmental factors
The public and private sectors need to be involved in strategic urban planning, transportation and economic development in relation to waste transportation. Planning is needed for rail and water -served facilities involved in the movement of recyclables and solid waste. Particular emphasis needs to be placed on land use and environmental compatibility within communities.

Donna B. Gerstle, John R. Oppenheimer, Alfred M. Levine - Cancer and landfill: The use of obituaries for life history data
Newspaper obituaries (from the Staten Island Advance) have been shown to be accurate sources of information on length of residence and occupational histories when compared to information from subject or surrogate interviews. In determining risk from an environmental source, there are a number of confounding variables: age of individual, distance from source, types of substances exposed to, type and location of occupation, site of exposure, and length of exposure. The previous study removed age as a confounding variable by doing age adjustment, and considered distance from the landfills - Fresh Kills and Brookfield. However, length of exposure was unknown. For mortality data, as contrasted with incidence data, length of residence can be obtained, and is dependent on distance from the center of the Fresh Kills landfill.

Steven Handel - Final vegetative cover
The Fresh Kills site is adjacent to the Staten Island Greenbelt, and to important estuary resources. The site has the potential to be an important addition to the City's open space and habitat for native plants and animals, such as migratory birds. This could be a valuable passive recreation site for the community. Ecological studies are underway to explore ways to add a variety of natural habitats, such as wildflower meadows, grasslands, and woodlands to the site using cost efficient and low maintenance techniques. These studies will be a background to the end-use plan, identifying what ecological communities are feasible for the site. To create this vegetation, the ecological processes of seed dispersal, recruitment of seedlings, and clonal growth have the potential to add many new species and individuals. These processes must be understood at the Fresh Kills environment.

Martha Hirst - Where do we go from here?
Expansion of the City's recycling program to include mixed paper and bulk metal; New leaf collection and composting initiatives, including a back yard composting pilot; Increased emphasis on outreach programs and improved public education efforts; and Renewed focus on waste prevention strategies, especially with City agencies.

Margrit Kaminsky - Cancer incidence on Staten Island in relation to the Landfills
 To determine if people living near the Fresh Kills and Brookfield Landfills had an elevated cancer incidence, age-adjusted rates of 14 cancer types for the years 1979-1988 were calculated and compared with cancer rates in the rest of Staten Island and with a demographically similar area in New York City. Results showed no statistically significant elevation in the cancer rates around the Landfills when compared with the rest of Staten Island; there was a statistically significant elevation in lung cancer rates among adults when compared to the demographically similar area. The study also found statistically significant elevations of 10 to 55% in the incidence of the following cancers on Staten Island as a whole: pharynx, colon, lung, bladder, larynx in men; and pharynx, colon, lung, breast, bladder, lymphoma in women. A follow-up study will calculate lung cancer rates for the years 1989-1992. A time-trend analysis of lung cancer for the years 1979-1992 will also be conducted.

Ronald A. Klempner - Dealing with the railroads
Obtaining the lowest price per ton for rail transport will depend on a number of factors to be explored in this presentation, including: destination and routing alternatives (North/West/South); short line involvement; train sizing (individual cars / block trains / unit trains); yard requirements and service; frequency of service (guarantees/reliability of line); clearance; intermodal containers; type of equipment utilized (compaction/loading); weights per rail car; negotiating with the railroad.

Michael E. Kress, Ph. D. - Leachate creation, transport and mitigation at the Fresh Kills landfill
One of the most important problems associated with the design, operation and long-term care of landfills is managing leachate that is formed when water passes through the deposited waste. The leachate generated from municipal solid waste is a mixture of organic and inorganic, and dissolved and colloidal solids. It contains products of decomposition of organic materials and soluble ions which present a potential pollution problem for surface and ground waters. The Fresh Kills Leachate Treatment Plant, formally known as the Veterans Avenue Treatment Plant, has been operational since January 1994. It has the capacity to treat 150,000 gallons of leachate per day. The plant is designed to treat ammonia, organic matter, and several metals. Long term plans propose an additional leachate processing plant which will process 900,000 gallons of leachate per day. An overview of leachate creation, transportation, and mitigation plans for the landfill will be presented.

Robert LoPinto, P.E. - Queens Draft Strategies for the Export Options of Solid Waste
The options for dealing with solid waste from Queens include the following:
1) An aggressive waste prevention, reuse and recycling plan, including composting and post collection recycling, must be the mainstay.
2) The existing Marine Transfer Stations should be utilized to the maximum extent possible. Requests for proposals (RFPs) issued by NYC DOS for disposal of residential solid waste should give preference to those responders who will utilize the existing facilities/system.
3) The preference for disposal options should be as follows: a - marine transfer/barge first; b - rail, and c - truck, only as secondary considerations.
4) The options selected should reduce the total number of truck miles driven (either to or from a transfer station and or final disposal site) to a minimum.
5) Land based transfer stations utilized should include processing facilities to further remove recyclables from the solid waste prior to export.
6) There should be sufficient time for public review and discussion of the Plan(s) proposed by the City.

Elizabeth G. Marshall, Ph.D. - Health impacts on DOS workers at the landfill
The New York State Department of Health Bureau of Occupational Health conducted a study to evaluate the frequency of acute health problems among employees working at Fresh Kills landfill. Interviews were conducted with employees of the New York City Department of Sanitation, including both Fresh Kills and off-site employees. Questions were asked about health symptoms experienced in the previous six months. The study found that work-related dermatologic, neurologic, hearing, and respiratory symptoms, and sore throats were reported by employees working at Fresh Kills more often than by off-site employees. All of these health problems, excluding hearing symptoms, have been associated with sanitation employees in other studies. Off-site laborers experienced more neuromuscular symptoms and injuries. Recommendations by NYSDOH include providing employees appropriate hearing protection, taking practical measures to reduce to reduce airborne dust levels at the landfill, and supplying enclosed cabs on the heavy equipment at the landfill when feasible.

Tom Outerbridge - Composting programs and technologies
There are a variety of composting programs and technologies that would be appropriate for New York City. These range from home composting bins and education to the construction of large centralized facilities.

Tom Outerbridge - The Manhattan Plan
As with each of the boroughs, Manhattan has been developing plans and recommendations both for itself and the City as a whole, to increase waste prevention, recycling and composting, and to effectively handle waste following closure of Fresh Kills.

Ron Poustchi - Impacts of odorous chemicals from landfills
Regulatory agencies are expected to deal with community odor problems associated with landfills, yet they have no objective methods for assessing the effects of odorous impacts. A three step strategy has been developed for quantifying the impacts of odorous emissions from existing or proposed stationary odorous sources on their surrounding communities. Successful implementation of the proposed protocols would establish whether there is a recognizable odor problem in the community: "how bad" the odor is; and "how much" odor there is. A public attitude survey has been designed to aid in the confirmation of recognizable odor problems in the community. Quantification of odors with respect to "how bad"is done through an evaluation of the degree of offensiveness (DO) as the product of intensity and hedonics. The various odor emitting sources are ranked in terms of potential level of source annoyance defined as product of the degree of offensiveness (DO) and volumetric flow rate (V). The odor impact on the surrounding community is assessed using a potential odor impact (POI) value, at downwind locations for various distances and elevations under a variety of meteorological conditions, as the product of percent probability of complaint and predicted degree of annoyance.

Ronald Stannard - Engineering Aspects
Discussion will focus on the unique engineering aspects of capping the Fresh Kills Landfill. Particular items to be discussed include: the gas venting system, the perimeter leachate collection system, the surface water runoff control system, and landfill cover stability.

Daniel Walsh, Ph.D. - Leachate from the Fresh Kills landfill
Extensive environmental monitoring has been performed since 1990 in ground-water, surface water and sediment in the vicinity of the Fresh Kills Landfill (Richmond County, N.Y.) to characterize the extent of environmental impact of leachate discharges from the landfill. Monitoring has shown that leachate discharges from the four landfill areas at Fresh Kills landfill do affect local groundwater, surface water and sediment. Closure of two landfill areas is expected to result in substantial reduction in leachate pollutant discharge to the environment. Environmental monitoring will continue at the landfill for many years to determine the effectiveness of these remedial efforts. This long-term environmental monitoring program will consist of sampling of more than 200 perimeter monitor wells several times each year, and approximately 20 local surface water and sediment stations annually and biannually, respectively. Samples from each well and sampling station are analyzed for several hundred chemical pollutants.

Barbara Warren - "Waste is not waste until it is wasted!"
Starting with the above premise, the alternative to garbage disposal and export will be presented with a focus on the fundamental institutional changes that will be required for the City of New York and the Department of Sanitation.

Barbara Warren - A mixed bag of options
Diversification and a multi-pronged strategy will enable Staten Island to limit export. Early development of the necessary infrastructure, while pursuing expansion of education and outreach, should lead to more recycling diversion by 2001.

Barbara Warren - Air emissions and permitting: Time for reducing public exposure to landfill emissions
Review of landfill emissions, State and Federal requirements, public concerns related to air permitting and flaring.

Bernd Zimmermann - The Bronx strategy
The Bronx strategy addresses the total waste stream. It emphasized waste reduction mechanisms, seeks to reduce the cost of doing business for existing enterprises and through new collection mechanism for recyclables seeks to provide a steady stream of non-contaminated feedstock to attract value added industries capitalizing on the Empowerment Zone. It recognizes the need to incorporate the Board of Education and the New York City Health Agency into the waste reduction and recycling system. Furthermore, it seeks self sufficiency by establishing a rational waste management infrastructure which responds to fair share concerns by proposing zoning changes to regulate the industry and to secure community input in siting decisions.

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