Call it “materials management” or call it trash collection, or just call it garbage, but it is an issue that our civilization ducks, but cannot hide from. We are all in the middle of a stream of packaging, materials, cardboard, tin cans, bottles, and assorted chaff that pass through our hands. It’s a big issue that needs strong leadership to navigate the many pitfalls and problems facing our ever-growing garbage heap. But recent shakeups at the Ulster County Resource and Recovery Agency (UCRRA) have some wondering whether this private agency should be placed under the purview of county government.

The UCRRA has a contract with Ulster County that ends in 2025. If there are to be changes, that would be a good time to enact them. But first to the agency’s latest issues, and recent changes on the UCRRA board. At the end of 2022, Chair Katherine Beinkafner and board member Charles Landi departed. They did so with some volleys fired in the direction of three Democratic county legislators. Landi expressed a frank opinion, “This is a disaster,” he was quoted as saying. The county legislature appoints the members of the UCRRA board and both Beinkafner and Landi had been involved for many years with the UCRRA.

That all followed the arrival of a new executive director, Greg Ollivier, last October. He came with 30 years of experience managing waste programs; most recently he was director of the solid waste division for the California city of Bakersfield, population 407,000.

Replacing Beinkafner and Landi were Andrew Ghiorse and Donna Egan. Ghiorse was formerly employed at the UCRRA and is now the chair of the board. The new board did not get along well, according to a recently resigned member, Margot Becker. In addition, another board member, Tom Kacandes, also departed, but without much in the way of explanation. Becker, however, fired her own volleys as she laid out what she said was a description of a dysfunctional board and an agency whose time has come for being taken over by the county.

In a conversation with Kingston Wire, Becker explained that she had hoped to improve the environmental energy on the board when she was appointed in February 2022. However, she found that the board was consumed with arguments and that she was unable to bring the kinds of concerns she felt the most strongly about to any kind of fruition there.

This past month she sent a letter by email to the Legislature, in which she said, “UCRRA is a place driven by bullying, self-interest, manipulation, aggression, secrets, impartial information divulgence, and extreme dysfunction.”

She noted staff complaints, and listed serious issues, including a poor view of the new executive director’s management style, describing it as too “top down,” in her opinion.

Perhaps the most serious issue would be the ongoing search across the county for a potential landfill site, in case Seneca Meadows does not stay open. If you live in this part of New York State, the UCRRA sends your trash to the huge Seneca Meadows landfill, lying close to the northern end of Seneca Lake, in the township of Seneca Falls. Figures for 2023 list about 150,000 tons of garbage just from this county, along with other bulk materials — building debris, sheetrock, battered old couches, tables, etc. In addition, the UCRRA sorts out recyclable materials, clean bottles, plastics of correct sort, paper, clean cardboard, and usable metals and finds markets for whatever it can sell. The agency has revenues close to $20 million and spends most of that on hauling trash over to Seneca Meadows. Round trip for the trucks runs to nigh on 500 miles. More than half of that spending, therefore, is on the fuel and the fees for dumping the stuff there.

With that also comes the politics of Seneca Falls, which is a divided township where Democrats want to shutter the vast landfill, while most Republicans on board side with the landfill’s Texas-based owner, who wants to keep it open until 2040. Every election for seats on the town board there opens the possibility that the Democrats will win back the majority and reinstate the law and decision they made in 2016, to close it down.

If Seneca Meadows closes, finding, securing, and getting through the politics and planning processes to open such a facility in Ulster County today could easily take 10 years.

Becker was nothing if not forthright in her email, saying, “I do not believe that these processes will be carried out in an ethical manner. Since I cannot affect the processes in any way, I choose at least not to give cover to them by standing silently by as they occur. It’s a rather hollow stance but it’s all I can do at this time to stand by my personal ethics.”

Ollivier was reported to be somewhat puzzled by this, expressing uncertainty over what the workplace harassment alleged by Becker was exactly. Ghiorse, who was not included in the original distribution of the email, said, “I don’t know who she’s talking about exactly. I honestly don’t.”

Becker made the point that her resignation was not about the administration staff. She concluded, “I think the best way for me to sound the alarm about severe dysfunction and unfairness at the UCRRA is to leave with a bang,” and apologized for any difficulty her resignation might cause.

Meanwhile, Jim Gordon, another board member at the UCRRA, had laid out the case for what he feels should be done in an Op-Ed for Hudson Valley One in March. “To start the modernization process, Ulster County’s government must absorb the Resource Recovery Agency (RRA) and turn it into a county department. I am a board member of the RRA, but I am expressing a personal opinion.”

He made several key points, including noting that having a board of five unpaid volunteers was simply insufficient in terms of oversight of an agency of this scale. When the UCRRA was first formed back in 1988, it was in the early days of environmental consciousness at the government level in Ulster County. The 20 towns all had their own “dumps” and these were all unlined and not well regulated. To this day no one really knows what went into some of them. However, that was then, and this is the third decade of the 21st century, and environmental issues have certainly come home to roost.

Gordon advocates directly, saying, “UCRRA operations would be guided by county executive Jen Metzger, and thus, be more directly answerable to the public. Moreover, a new materials management department could coordinate with the county’s existing planning, environment, and public works departments to create ways to collect and process useful reusable materials, and do necessary waste disposal.”

And finally, casting an eye over to Seneca Falls. Councilmember Steve Churchill, there, was quoted saying, "We have had our future compromised. We put a frightful and unknown burden on our children and their children. We have sold our souls for a few measly dollars.” The waste stream that flows through our hands, our kitchens, our homes, has to go somewhere and politics may yet bring us a new kind of crisis.