FW: Brookhaven Community Coalition Prevails in Long Island Compost Negotiations

From: Adrienne Esposito [mailto:aesposito@citizenscampaign.org]
Subject: Brookhaven Community Coalition Prevails in Long Island Compost Negotiations

 

 

All BCC Coalition Members and Supporters

 

As many of you may know, the BCC Executive Board has worked tirelessly and aggressively for 2 years to resolve the many concerns at the Long Island Compost.  We are delighted to provide you with the significant end results that we are very hopeful will address the concerns and improve our quality of life for all Brookhaven residents.

 

On Monday, a critical announcement will be made -  a stipulation agreement to settle the DEC action rescinding the variance allowing Long island Compost to operate an open air transfer station has been agreed upon. Normally this process would happened in private between Long Island Compost (LIC) and the DEC with the assistance of an Administrative Law Judge.  An agreement would be worked out or a judgment would be imposed by the Administrative Law Judge. Due to BCC efforts, this time things went dramatically different.

 

Since the DEC announced they were rescinding LIC’s variance, in October 2011, the BCC executive board has been very busy. We have traveled twice to Albany to meet with DEC officials, department heads, and our state representatives. We put together a huge packet of information, community testimonies, maps and letters written by adversely impacted residents and sent it to the administrative law judge handling the case. We had countless meetings with, DEC Region One Director, Peter Scully and his staff. We had a number of meetings with Charles Vigliotta. 

 

We toured the LIC facility with DEC and elected officials and their staff members. We have spent hundreds of hours studying every law, regulation and judgment, from DEC permits to the clean air act. We have spent even more time researching everything from anaerobic digesters, other technologies and  to how manganese gets into the ground water from composting processes.  We have met with numerous elected officials from Supervisor Ed Romaine to Charles Schumers chief of staff.  Citizens Campaign for the Environment allocated a great deal of resources to this campaign.

 

We even, traveled with Charles Vigliotti to see a compost facility in Massachusetts, in an effort to gain on the ground information for odor control measures. While on this trip. we met a very knowledgeable consultant who was utilized by the Massachusetts facility. We advised DEC that this national consultant should be hired by LIC to figure out the best way to deal with all the issues. Peter Scully agreed and LIC hired him. He conducted an extensive odor and dust study which culminated in a presentation to BCC executive board, DEC, town officials, and representatives from our elected officials.

 

Based on those findings, input from BCC, CCE, and directives from DEC, a stipulation agreement was drawn up and in an unprecedented move LIC allowed BCC to review the agreement and make recommendations which we did.

 

On Monday June 24 the stipulation will be made public. We view the dramatic changes that will take place over the next two years as a huge victory because a number of issues that are not associated with the transfer station are being addressed and the way compost is processed on LI may be changed for the better by this agreement. Please understand, we don't anticipate that all odors will be gone however, we do believe our quality of life will be dramatically improved. We are hopeful for the future. Thank you to everyone who stuck with us and supported the BCC is these efforts. 

 

Please feel free to join us Monday at 10:00 am at town hall for the announcement.   (outside on the lawn!)