Covanta was not certain the ash waste dumped at the Brookhaven landfill was safe, according to a Newsday investigation on Thursday.
The company operates waste-to-energy facilities in Hempstead and Babylon, where household waste from seven Long Island municipalities is incinerated and the power generated is sold to the Long Island Power Authority. Much of the ash that is produced is sent to the landfill in Yaphank.
Internal records obtained by Newsday that were revealed as part of ongoing litigation show that between 2006 and 2014, Covanta struggled to deliver the specific mix of the “bottom” and “fly” ash needed to pass the state’s nonhazardous waste requirements. Fly ash is lighter and more likely to become airborne, which can pollute the sky and groundwater with heavy metals and chemicals.
In addition, the state monitor omitted negative information on inspection reports at the incinerator, according to documents obtained by Newsday.
"We've been lucky so far that DEC hasn't challenged us,” wrote Covanta engineer Scott Wheeler to colleagues in a 2010 email.
Covanta denies all wrongdoing, saying that its ash has never been proven hazardous. Covanta Hempstead and Covanta headquarters in Morristown, N.J., did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
As part of its Trash Talkin’ series, WSHU spoke with Covanta Hempstead Area Asset Manager Dawn Harmon in March, echoing “no ash from Covanta facilities has ever been determined to be a hazardous waste.”
The state Department of Environmental Conservation started an investigation after a whistleblower lawsuit made accusations that the company mixed toxic waste into the ash. Newsday reports that there were multiple failures by the state to deem the ash as hazardous waste when Covanta Hempstead failed a toxicity test in 2007. Over a period of four months, the facility sent its ash to the Brookhaven landfill.
In the lawsuit, the whistleblower revealed to be former employee Patrick Fahey — accused Covanta of withholding records, including ash-testing results and trucking logs, which the on-site state monitor has access to.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
“Waste energy ash is regulated by the [Environmental Protection Agency] and we test it often, routinely to confirm that it is non-hazardous,” Harmon said in March.
The report also reveals that the company didn’t make equipment upgrades in Westbury that would've made the mixing process easier and be in-line with industry-standards.
Another oversight by the state occurred in March 2014 when the on-site state monitor Peter Hourigan, who has since died, ordered facility improvements and a new plan to begin mixing its bottom and fly ash for testing in an incinerator pit – after seeing the conditions of the facility a month earlier alongside his boss Syed Rahman.
Hourigan had pulled aside Wheeler, the Covanta Hempstead environmental engineer, for a stairwell meeting — that was secretly recorded by Wheeler. The state monitor implied that there was a mole within the company.
“Don’t say anything about what I said to anybody because you never know who you’re talking to,” Hourigan said Wheeler, revealing that the state had Covanta under a microscope. “Do you understand the implications of the statement I just made?”
The Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group has called for the closure of the Yaphank facility, and for there to be an immediate clean up of the North Bellport community’s air, land and water that has been contaminated with a toxic plume emitting from the landfill.
In March, at an environmental symposium alongside Long Island town supervisors, Monique Fitzgerald, a North Bellport resident and co-founder of the group, challenged Michael Van Brunt, vice president of environmental and sustainability at Covanta.
“We have the lowest life expectancy,” Fitzgerald said. “And then, we have Covanta Hampstead, within a community that is by-and-large Black, Indigenous, Latinx community — we're being overburdened by these facilities. And we don't even have a seat here at this table.”
“What our jobs are as waste practitioners is to reduce those impacts to the extent that we possibly can. There is no perfect solution. We have goals and endeavor to sort of operate our facilities as well as we possibly can, but it does have impacts,” Van Brunt said.
“Ultimately, we still have to meet the needs of the island in terms of waste generation,” he added.
Several municipalities that also sued the company have agreed to settle their claims. However, top Brookhaven officials supported Covanta over whistleblower Fahey in internal emails and memos.
The Town of Brookhaven did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
