The Brookhaven landfill is a key issue in the upcoming election for Suffolk County Executive. A debate hosted by Newsday became heated when candidates responded to an investigation into the landfill’s past — and its future.
Democrat Dave Calone and Republican Ed Romaine traded barbs about how Romaine, the Brookhaven Town supervisor, has operated the landfill in light of new evidence that toxic ash may have been dumped there.
Calone criticized Romaine for not closing the landfill during his 11-year tenure as supervisor.
“You can't be pro-environment if you're letting New York City take its trash and dump it in Suffolk County,” Calone said. “You can't be pro-environment when you're listening to your campaign donors, and when they asked you to sweep under the rug an allegation that there's toxic ash going into your landfill and hurting the communities around you — and you look the other way.”
The day before, two advocates with the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group (BLARG) interrupted Romaine at an AARP-sponsored candidate forum, calling for the immediate closure and clean-up of the facility and nearby North Bellport community.
They were thrown out of the forum for holding signs and distributing copies of the Newsday investigation, which showed Brookhaven supported Covanta Hempstead, the town’s vendor being sued by a whistleblower for mixing toxic ash into deposits hauled into the Yaphank-based facility.
Earlier this week, the Brookhaven NAACP, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, and BLARG called for New York Attorney General Letitia James to launch an independent investigation into the Town of Brookhaven, Covanta, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which assigned a state monitor who omitted negative information on inspection records.
“[The landfill’s] still poisoning people,” Calone said. “They found that there's actually chemicals in the water in the surrounding communities.”
“The landfill needs to be closed. We need to come up with a county-level, we need to come up with a comprehensive way to work with the towns on reducing garbage,” he added.
Ahead of Wednesday’s debate, the town, nor Covanta, has responded to requests for comment.
“I'm just checking to see if Dave's pants are on fire because you just lied about a whole host of things,” Romaine countered.
“I put the landfill on a plan for closure. This landfill will close in 2024 to construction debris and shortly after that, to ash,” he said. “As far as ash is concerned, it is tested by the DEC and produced by Covanta and buried. The town has no role in testing ash.”
Romaine took credit for previously blocking a plan to raise the height of the landfill, and repeated that he welcomes a state investigation into Covanta.
As county executive, Calone said he would ramp up recycling and composting programs in an effort to move Suffolk to zero waste.
