An effort to map out areas of the county that could potentially host a new landfill were put on hold last week after a consultant hired for the job backed out, citing a “professional conflict.”

Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency Executive Director Tim DeGraff, meanwhile, said that the mapping initiative was purely “archival” and doesn’t signal any new push by the agency to develop a landfill somewhere in the county.

DeGraff cited what he called misleading media reports for the consultant — a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz’s geology program — deciding to withdraw.

“It was made out to be something that it wasn’t,” said DeGraff. “It’s an unfortunate situation.”

At issue are efforts by UCRRA to develop contingency plans in the event that the Seneca Meadows landfill shuts down. Currently, Ulster’s trash is shipped 200 miles from the UCRRA processing facility to Seneca Meadows, near the central New York town of Waterloo. An operating permit for the landfill is set to expire at the end of 2025.

Seneca Meadows has applied for an extension on the permit, but if it’s not granted, Ulster County and other communities across the state could be forced to pay higher fees to ship trash to a more distant landfill. Or they could come up with another option, like a local landfill.

At an April 26 meeting of the UCRRA board, agency Treasurer Charlie Landi sounded a note of urgency in the effort to develop a contingency plan.

“The clock is ticking on Seneca Meadows,” Landi said. “If we have two or three years left, then, all of a sudden we get a phone call that says, ‘We can no longer take your trash,’ we have a major problem.”

The mapping effort would have paid the consultant the modest sum of $400 to make a map of the county showing areas that would be off-limits for landfill construction because of environmental factors like soil composition, or regulatory issues, like being located in the New York City watershed. The effort would have incorporated GIS software which lets users create maps with overlays showing a wide range of data from land-use restrictions to the location of utilities.

DeGraff said that the UCRRA does not have the software or anyone on staff trained in its use. He added that the plan was simply to develop the map and file it away as part of an effort to comply with the county’s solid waste management plan.

“This was not a feasibility study, it was just for archival purposes,” said DeGraff. “All I was doing was following along with what’s in our waste management plan, to look into long-term disposal, and landfill is one of the options.”

DeGraff said that it’s by no means certain that Seneca Meadows will lose its permit and actually shut down. But even if the upstate landfill does close, DeGraff said there would be other options besides setting aside a large parcel within county borders for a landfill. The idea that an Ulster County landfill, he added, could be in place anytime soon is unrealistic.

“There’s no way we could have a landfill sited in Ulster County by the time Seneca Meadows closed down, if they were to close down,” said DeGraff. “You’re looking at 10 to 15 years on permitting alone.”