Closing briefs filed in CWM landfill permitting process | Local News | niagara-gazette.com

An entrance to the CWM Chemical Services, LLC landfill in the Town of Porter. .

The process of determining the fate of a proposed CWM toxic waste landfill in Niagara County may finally be in the homestretch.

Closing briefs were filed in early October by the various parties involved with the application hearing process. It is the latest step in an application process that has gone on now for more than 20 years.

Briefs were filed by CWM, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and other “intervenors” approved by the state, which are the counsel for Niagara County, the town and village of Lewiston, and the Village of Youngstown, the counsel for the Lewiston-Porter School District, the Niagara County Farm Bureau, Residents for Responsible Government, the Tuscarora Nation counsel, the Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper counsel, and Lewiston resident Amy Witryol.

The briefs filed by the intervenors were all against opening a new landfill, arguing the data CWM used to satisfy the permit requirements is incomplete, the state had stated such a facility is not necessary and it presents environmental risks.

“Simply put, CWM’s proposal is not in the public interest, is not necessary, and endangers citizens, including K-12 students, faculty and staff, and those in the agriculture industry,” reads the brief filed by Residents for Responsible Government.

CWM’s brief says its evidence for the proposed landfill satisfied the findings of the sitting board allowing the company to obtain a siting certificate and DEC permits and will satisfy the criteria of the state’s environmental conservation law. It also claims the new landfill will result in more than $1 billion of economic and fiscal benefits to the state and local governments and businesses while calling the intervenors’ arguments baseless and devoid of merit.

The brief filed by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation stated that RMU-2, if approved, will operate pursuant to the various permits the department will issue that meet all applicable state regulatory requirements that are protective of the environment and public health. It also stated that “no fact-based evidence of any significant weight or reliability has been presented by the intervenors to either deny or further condition the draft permits issued by the department for RMU-2.”

CWM owns and operates on 710 acres of land at its Model City facility located at 1550 Balmer Road. From 1972 to 2015, CWM ran one of the largest PCB and toxic waste landfills in the U.S. there, accepting such waste from all over the country, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

CWM originally filed its application with the state in 2003 to open a new 43.5-acre landfill spanning the towns of Lewiston and Porter for disposing of more than 6 million tons of industrial and hazardous waste, dubbed RMU-2. CWM initially expected it to be approved in 2005, but the process and hearings for it have gone on for so long that the existing landfill closed as it reached capacity in 2015.

Numerous hearings for the landfill have taken place over the years, covering topics like its impacts on the local economy, the geology it would sit on, real estate values, radiation-contaminated soil, the noise from trucks carrying the waste, and the air quality from the landfill. Some of the topics were deemed not necessary for the permit approval process.

The next step in this process is an administrative law judge giving their non-binding recommendations to the siting board and the commissioner designee, followed by two rounds of exception hearings which have yet to be scheduled.

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