For more than 50 years, Hannah Thomas has lived in North Bellport, N.Y. at the foot of a landfill.
Every week, trucks haul tons of waste from across Long Island through her 13-block neighborhood to be disposed of at the more than 160-acre Brookhaven Landfill.
On Saturday, Thomas led a march of two dozen Brookhaven Town residents and their children down Montauk Highway to urge the Town of Brookhaven to “close and clean up” the landfill in Yaphank, about a mile north of the demonstration. Residents of North Bellport encouraged their community of color to join them at an Earth Day rally organized at Robert Rowley Park to talk about “environmental racism” in their neighborhood.
“We just want people to know here that the landfill’s existence is causing major health crises in our community,” said Thomas, standing in front of a banner that read: “Dump the Dump.”
Thomas, now a grandmother, said she has not always had the place to voice her concerns about the environmental and health impact of raising a family in this community.
"This community has borne the brunt of this landfill for way too long. And it's time to shut it down, to remediate, to clean up and invest in the health of these community members."Ezekiel Torres, of Shirley
She created that space for herself with the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group (BLARG), which she co-founded in 2020 amid a racial reckoning in the U.S. The group calls for the immediate closure of the landfill — since 1990 one of only two remaining facilities on Long Island — and public engagement in regional planning for waste management in a way that unburdens communities of color like hers.
Last month, a New York working group identified North Bellport – along with more than 80 other U.S. census tracts on Long Island – as a “disadvantaged community” that is disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change. Most of these communities are home to waste disposal and transfer facilities. The state released a draft solid waste management proposalearlier this month, which will help inform planning by local governments.
BLARG said the Town of Brookhaven, which has been operating on an expired local waste management plan since 2009, has ignored their pleas for help. Town officials were absent from the community’s Earth Day celebration, and could not be reached for comment over the weekend.
“We deserve a clean environment. clean air, clean water and we know that will only happen in this community when we step up,” said Abena Asare, a BLARG member from Brookhaven.
Generational trauma
While the rally at the park grew to about 75 people, Thomas and other demonstrators reflected on why some neighbors looked on from behind their screen doors, and on the challenges that make environmental justice difficult to discuss within this community.
“I see about 75-80% Caucasians in front of me out here to fight for North Bellport injustices,” said Devon Toney, of Brentwood. “These houses back here, you're gonna see nothing but African Americans sprinkled with some Hispanics.”
Monique Fitzgerald, a BLARG member from North Bellport, said policies and practices on Long Island have historically disadvantaged communities of color by fostering distrust in civic engagement, or making it difficult to participate in direct action. “It’s generational trauma,” Toney added.
She said illegal dumping, heavy truck traffic and nearby industrial properties can create an environment where residents feel disconnected with their neighborhood. She also points to health concerns including, “low life expectancy rates due to high rates of cancer, asthma and other respiratory illnesses.”
"There is a relationship between systemic environmental racism, and economic devastation and all the other ills of the society. It's not any one individual, it's systemic. And if ever there was an argument for health reparations for this community — the damages that had been done to the children and the older people of this community, will be plaguing their health for years and years and years."Susan Stein, of the Poor People's Campaign
Nearly 30 lawsuits have been filed challenging the environmental and health impacts of the Brookhaven Landfill — the latest by the mother of a teenager who died from cancer believed to have been caused by exposure to landfill emissions while attending Frank P. Long Intermediate School. Fitzgerald also blames such exposure for 35 additional cancer cases in connection with the school since 1995, as well as health impacts to institutions within a mile of the landfill, including a Suffolk County homeless shelter and Yaphank Correctional Facility.
“They're not keeping us safe in our community. They're not keeping us safe in our schools. They're not keeping us safe after shelter, and they're not keeping us safe at the jails,” Fitzgerald said. “And we're here to protect all. I mean, all of our institutions, they're all part of our community.’
In 2019, the state Department of Health issued a report finding no evidence of a cancer cluster in relation to the landfill’s proximity to Frank P. Long Intermediate School.
In addition to environmental impacts on community health, Toney said financial uncertainty, housing insecurity, gun violence, police misconduct and a lack of representation of racial diversity in local government make it difficult to create change in communities of color.
“We need to learn how to teach the culture — rewire our brain. That's when we become a new person,” said Toney, the founder of AIN’T (All Included N’ Treated), which advocates for social and economic mobility.
“Because the people who we look at now,” he said, referring to the crowd of “white allies” in the park standing up for the community of color, “that's not even the people we want to represent.”
BLARG and other community groups are calling for the Town of Brookhaven to offer more ways to engage the public, with additional hearings at varying times of day for people to attend around busy work schedules. They also want more transparency in its plans for the landfill, especially about the federal and state infrastructure and climate funding it could receive to help close the facility.
“We are here today standing in solidarity with all of these groups. And it takes every last one of us — Black, white, gay, straight, young, old — whatever it is, because if it's not unity, that isn't community,” Brookhaven NAACP President Georgette Grier-Key. “We say close the landfill. Respect the people that live here.”
“We want you to remember to tell a friend to tell a friend that Black people, the BIPOC community cares about our environment,” Grier-Key added. “We care about our health, and we care about our children, and we care about the future of our children, which includes having a viable place to live, which is a human right.”
Garbage beltway
The remediation group is concerned the facility will continue to accept waste that is burned into ash until capacity is reached a few years after other services are anticipated to stopby the end of 2024. During a meeting last week, for example, the Town Board approved resolutions that would continue agreements to accept trash from other municipalities potentially through this deadline, including with the Village of Lake Grove.
BLARG also said the public has not had enough opportunity to review proposals from several private companies to haul waste off Long Island by rail at two planned transfer stations in Yaphank and Medford, or another facility under construction that would convert organic waste into energy near the landfill and the North Bellport community.
“I call it the garbage beltway,” Fitzgerald said. She waves her hand in the air, drawing a perimeter around her community: down Montauk Highway, up Horseblock Road, and through Medford.
“It’s nothing but trash. It is overdeveloped in warehousing and trucks,” she said. “The truck emissions alone is killing us. And then you have the pollution from the landfill … We're boxed in in this community.”
Last week, the Town Board also approved additional funding to spend over $2 million in its next budget to manage greenhouse gas emissions from the landfill. Town Waste Management Commissioner Christine Fetten has said that Brookhaven follows state and federal requirements for monitoring the air and groundwater testing from its landfill.
To celebrate Earth Day, the town launched a contest to incentivize waste reduction. A handful of winners would receive composting tumblers for home-use.
Fitzgerald, who helps to organize a composting program at North Bellport’s Chris Hobson and Bill Neal Memorial Community Garden, said this was a lackluster response considering the town is over a decade behind on local waste management planning.
“We need real composting to be happening curbside and accessible to communities,” she said. “Something that is incentivized, because at this present moment [...] we need the municipality to fund that.”
The North Bellport composting program begins this season on Saturday, May 13.
