Ulster County's recently installed waste management honcho Marc Rider took his charm offensive to the county legislature's Energy, Environment and Sustainability Committee Tuesday, clarifying a few points about his plans and setting the table for negotiations to come. A major focus of the meeting was the politically explosive question of local landfills.

As executive director of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA), a public benefit corporation with a $20 million annual budget and a rocky history, Rider has been charged with finding alternatives to an existing disposal system whose days are numbered: the Western New York landfill to which UCRRA hauls our waste is on the verge of closure and, in any case, UCRRA's contract with the landfill is almost up.

Some alternative solution must be found — hopefully, one with a carbon footprint smaller than the current one, made by trucking 140,000 tons of municipal solid waste a combined 1.8 million miles annually. Rider spoke of this last week with the Legislature's UCRRA Reform Committee; Tuesday was a further step in those rounds; Thursday he'll meet again with the Reform Committee.

Rider offered Tuesday's gathering a four-point presentation with the easy stuff first: 1) user-friendly training for the public and 2) a test program for EV trash-hauling trucks.

The training is a four-times-a-year event for those wishing to safely dispose of household hazardous waste (like paint, primarily). The test program, with funding by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), involves the purchase of two EV trash haulers and a number of charging stations by the summer of 2025, prospectively, to ascertain the feasibility of such a system. A potential fringe benefit would be use of the system for EV school buses.

Rider's point three was an update on changes to UCCRA's contract with Middletown-based engineering and environmental consultants Cornerstone Engineering, whose report Rider characterized as “a draft ... incomplete.”

One change is that Rider, rather than Cornerstone, will take on the task of studying the potential for waste management on a regional basis — an idea that has been previously studied, to no effect. “That's a lot of what I'm going to do, partnerships with our region's counties,” he told the room. “I'm already starting to make those connections.”

A wholly new task for Cornerstone, Rider said, is to look for Ulster County sites of at least 50 acres that might serve as landfills, based on the hope that UCRRA's future waste diversion efforts can be accommodated in less space.

Cornerstone has already reviewed 10 potential sites listed in an earlier study by another consultant, Tivoli-based Hydroquest (whose leaked findings cause an uproar), as well as closed landfills that might be reclaimed for further use. “That is not the bulk of possible locations throughout the county,” Rider said. “It's important we get a comprehensive view and get all of the possible sites at the same time so you have the best information.”

Rider expects the Cornerstone report “in the next three to six months, probably three.” Until then, he said, the draft remains confidential, “not FOIA-able … because of what we've seen happen in the past.”

That past was immediately echoed by Legislator Manna Jo Greene, who urged that environmental justice not be left out of siting considerations. Speaking specifically of Plattekill, ground zero for the Hydroquest siting firestorm, she said “It's had its share and can be ruled out on the basis of environmental justice.”

That drew a complicated response from Rider: “In the Hydroquest study itself, any site that was located — I think we need to narrowly define what an environmental justice site is, and that has its own definition — that was in a location that is an environmental justice site was taken off the board – in the Hydroquest study itself,” he said. “The reason I don't want to release a draft report is I get calls from Plattekill residents or real estate agents that their properties are basically worthless at this point. People can't sell because their property, it's near something that at one time may have been considered.”

“At this time,” Rider said, “the agency isn't looking at siting a landfill at any particular location and the [Cornerstone] report isn't either. But, he added, “I wish I could tell Plattekill people with certainty that Plattekill's off the table. I can't with certainty say that, but I can say it's not a preferred site at this point.”

That's not much comfort for Plattekill residents. And Legislator Kathy Nolan spoke to the need to generate community acceptance, “to welcome the siting of a facility that could be handled in more modern ways and have a very different impact than prior landfills have had.”

Whatever plan Rider's agency extracts from the Cornerstone report will be subject to review by the county legislature, which will then soon after review the County's contract with UCCRA, which expires March 2025.

“Without that contract,” Rider noted. “The county would be obligated to operate the local solid waste management plan. The report is due out in June. I think the work has to start even sooner than that.”