Long Island’s Waste Future Uncertain as Landfill Closure Looms

Long Island is fast approaching a major crossroads that will force 13 towns to make monumental waste management decisions quickly. In a couple of years, the island will be down to one landfill, leaving in question what to do with the heaping tonnage of waste generated by the three million people in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and those counties’ businesses.

The most urgent tasks are finding homes for municipal solid waste (MSW) before Brookhaven Landfill shutters and figuring out what to do with construction and demolition (C&D) debris even sooner; the site will no longer take C&D waste beginning at the end of this year.

But there will be other tight corners to navigate in preparation for Brookhaven’s closure and the future beyond for the 1,400-square mile region.

For now, most of the MSW is burned, as Long Island banned landfilling this material in the 1980s to protect its aquifers. They are the region’s sole drinking water source and over the years virtually every landfill on the island was found to have contaminated residents’ drinking water.

It is yet to be determined how long the disposal site can take the roughly 350,00 tons of MSW ash it receives yearly. As far as C&D debris is concerned, some of it is already redirected, moving off the island by train, though plenty still heads to the Brookhaven site as the date to end to that practice edges closer.

Much of the glut of commercial trash already moves off Long Island too, but by truck rather than rail, meaning more trips, more emissions, and more expense.

The Waste Reduction and Management Institute (WRMI) at Stony Brook University has been called in to help shape a regional waste management plan to address these multilayered issues, with feedback from municipalities, the counties, and local industry.

Step one in this early work is to conduct a state-funded study. For now, lead investigator Michael White and his team are assessing those first two most pressing uncertainties: management of MSW ash and C&D waste. They will also have a deeper look into options to transport waste and recycling on and off the island. And they will explore means to keep the four mass burn facilities running that handle residents’ daily trash. That’s been pegged as another urgent issue – the operators’ power purchase agreements with utilities expire at the end of 2027.

New York, like a number of states, does not consider incineration an acceptable means to make renewable energy. But municipalities with stakes in Long Island’s fate see the technology as a necessity from where they sit, given the MSW landfill ban.

“Trash keeps coming; we have to put it some place. And we can recover energy from it,” White says.

He estimates that trucking the ash off Long Island would involve about another 180,000 trips a year, on top of the trips to move out other streams. That would significantly ratchet up the operations’ environmental footprint compared to hauling to the local landfill as is done for now.

Early conversations around MSW ash are centering around freight railing it, aligned with recycling more and burning less. White projects that freight railing may become a chosen solution for some other waste types and can see leaning toward adoption of more recycling technologies, especially for C&D debris. He also anticipates recommendations around recovering other materials that are currently slipping by, like metals in ash and possibly the ash itself for beneficial use.

The work groups that will vet issues and options will prioritize environmental justice and equity, says White who has promised to pull disadvantaged communities into the conversations. Local advocates like Brookhaven Action and Remediation Group (BARG) have previously said this has not been happening and expressed skepticism over what Long Island’s waste future will mean for them.

While BARG did not respond to Waste360’s request for comment, the environmental justice communities it represents have voiced concerns about the Brookhaven disposal site that sits near their homes.  Their past complaints about odor issues led to state orders for corrective measures. And disadvantaged neighborhoods’ grievances about combustion facilities prompted a state investigation, finding Covanta’s ash management practices have violated environmental laws several times, with the most recent documented event being in 2013.

As WRMI embarks on the regional study, the town of Brookhaven is moving forward with efforts to curb waste and advance a circular economy ahead of when the landfill it hosts shuts down, says Christine Fetten, commissioner, department of Recycling and Sustainable Materials Management, Town of Brookhaven.

It is partnering with Habitat for Humanity and other local organizations to advance reuse and recycling. At the same time Brookhaven is working to identify industries to come to Long Island to develop a market for postconsumer glass, and considering curbside collections of glass, among projects under exploration.

Along with neighboring jurisdictions, the town wants to continue managing its MSW at home via combustion, Fetten says.

She cites repercussions if these plants were to shutter, given the island’s unique circumstances.

“These facilities reduce MSW upwards of 90 percent. If they do not continue to operate, an estimated 1.8 million tons per year of MSW will need to be shipped off Long Island. We already have very stressed transportation infrastructure. And if the facilities cannot maintain operation, there will be direct impacts on residential costs for proper waste management,” she says.

Long Island has a long road ahead in its work to ferret out and implement solutions—and a short window to accomplish these undertakings.

White sees potential for the WRMI, local governments, and industry to do great things together.  

“We are listening to and sharing information with municipalities and entities that are responsible for the work on Long Island,” he says, commenting that connection between all stakeholders is critical to achieving best outcomes.  

“And while this work will be specific to Long Island, the framework and some of the ideas we are developing could have a broader base use beyond our region,” he says.