02.16.04
JOHN MAHONEY
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NEWPORT, VT | Everyone official from Governor Jim
Douglas down to the city rat catcher here appears to
have faith in Vermont's Big Dump Guy.
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They all want to believe him when he says he'll never
do anything to pollute beautiful Lake Memphremagog.
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John Casella of Rutland is the king of garbage in the
Green Mountain State. His parent company, Casella
Waste Management, owns and operates the old
Waste USA landfill in the Lake Memphremagog
watershed.
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On Thursday, February 19, at 7 p.m. he is going to tell
a public meeting that they can trust him to do the right
thing if they allow him to bury up to 440,000 tons of
waste in his landfill each and every year into the
distant future.
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All they need is a little faith:
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<ul>
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<li>That Casella Waste Management will never
accept any toxic materials in the 2500 tons a day (five
days a week year 'round) that will be trucked to their
Coventry landfill from all over Vermont and its
neighbors.
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<li>That if by some weird circumstance toxic material
does make its way to the landflll, his employees will
never bury it -- if they discover it, they will contain it
and safely dispose of it.
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<li>That the plastic landfill liners will last forever and
never leak toxic fluids into the drainage basin and
thus into the lake from which some 200,000 Canadian
neighbors get their drinking water. However, the US
Environmental Protection Agency says plastic liners
won't last, and they will leak.
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<li>That if by some weird circumstance -- say, an
earthquake -- the plastic membrane is breached, the
compacted clay bottom will prevent the poisons from
seeping into the lake. Of course, toxins like benzene
will diffuse through three feet of compacted clay in five
years, studies show.
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<li>That the drainage pipes that collect the millions of
gallons of toxic leachate in the covered pits will never
clog and will always work. The pipes are buried under
mountains of waste and there's no way to get down in
there to check but, hey, we need a little faith here.
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<li>That Casella will clean up a couple of old, unlined
landfills pits that are said now to be seeping
leachates. Who knows what's in those pits? To be fair,
Casella didn't bury that stuff -- the problem pre-dates
his stewardship.
</ul>
Yes, trust me, the argument goes, and trust
technology. Let's all show a little faith here.
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Bob Walker, a Brownington tree farmer, isn't buying
into Casella's plea for faith-based approval of his plan
to make a small personal fortune by burying millions
of tons of other people's discards in our drainage
basin.
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&quot;Explain to me what happens if there's an
earthquake,&quot; says Walker, a former member of
the Vermont Legislature.
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Robert Benoit of Austin, Quebec, doesn't have much
faith, either.
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&quot;They [plastic liners] always leak,&quot; says
Benoit, a retired member of Quebec's National
Assembly who has been involved in the fight to close
down the huge Bestan landfill that opponents says is
threatening the north end of Lake Memphremagog.
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And I don't trust them, either.
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I don't have any particular environmental credentials -hell, I'm just a hillbilly snapshooter whose family has
lived around Lake Memphremagog for more than 200
years.
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I don't think the problems will necessarily surface in
my lifetime. Bob Walker, Robert Benoit, John Casella,
and I will be dust.
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But I believe that our great-grandchildren will pay the
price for our lets-bury-the-problem mindset.
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And they won't be calling Lake Memphremagog
'Beautiful Waters.'