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Improvements all around, except for the Northeast Kingdom

by Scott Wheeler

Good news is coming out of Chittenden County. The folks down there have come to the realization that it’s time to clean up the crown jewel of the western side of Vermont – Lake Champlain. Initial plans are to spend millions of dollars to accomplish this task. Governor James Douglas has also thrown his support behind the clean up. And on the opposite side of the state, there is a move to clean up the Connecticut River.
It’s great that people are realizing that we have misused our lakes and waterways for far too long. In addition to benefiting the fish and wildlife that live within them, cleaning up our state’s bodies of water will benefit the human inhabitants who live alongside them in this rural state – including helping keep the tourist dollar flowing into Vermont. Yet, up here in Orleans County, something very different is going on near the shores of one of our crown jewels – Lake Memphremagog. Instead of cleaning up our beautiful lake, there are plans to expand the privately owned landfill on the Airport Road in Coventry to possibly the biggest landfill in the state. Already a large amount of waste from out of the Northeast Kingdom is trucked to the landfill, a landfill that is built a short distance from Lake Memphremagog’s wetlands, including a short distance from the Black River, one of the lake’s major tributaries. In return for our generosity for taking everybody’s trash while they beautify their corner of the state, it has been reported in the news that the landfill operators now want to buy out the nearby state owned airport to make way for this expansion. Gee, that doesn’t seem like much of a deal. They get the airport and we get everybody else’s trash.

Quite honestly, I can’t blame the landfill operators for wanting to expand their landfill here in Orleans County. Other than a handful of people who have questioned the logic of allowing the landfill to expand within such a close proximity to the river and wetlands, little has been mentioned in the news. This issue has been overshadowed by the debates about what impact wind towers will have on Vermont’s landscape and what impact cell towers in church steeples will have on the health of church goers and neighbors (both valid issues for those who raised them).

Before I go any further, I have to say that I can hardly classify myself as an expert on topics relating to pollution, waste removal, or how to best run a landfill. I simply write to suggest that before we move ahead with such a major undertaking, that we all take a deep breath and think this thing through. Quite honestly I’d like to see a bit more dialogue on the topic and maybe a “well published” meeting or two on the topic in which “everybody” in the region should be invited to participate, whether they’re in favor of the expansion or they’re against it. Although the land fill is located in Coventry, it could have a regional impact for those who live in the Lake Memphremagog water basin – maybe not today, tomorrow, or even 50 years from now, but there are some people who fear that eventually, sometime down the road, it will become an issue, if not for us, then for our descendants.
We need to remember that this area, as with many other areas around this state and the country, is filled with “good ideas” about how to handle our waste – many of these “good ideas” also involved our waterways. Let me just name a few of these grand ideas that seemed like good ideas at the time. Older residents of the region might remember that the general area where the soccer field is located in Gardner Park in Newport once served as a dump – yards from the banks of the Clyde River. Then, later, there was the “burning dump” on the Coventry Road in Newport, just adjacent to what is now the state fishing access. Garbage was burned there day and night just a short distance from the shores of the South Bay portion of Lake Memphremagog. Then, moving up the road to Derby, people, for a time, disposed of their garbage over the bank in the vicinity of Mulkins Corp.– to the banks of the Clyde River, with some of the debris tumbling into the river.
There is little doubt that the lined landfills, such as the one located in Coventry, constitutes a huge improvement in the handling of our waste compared to our dumps of the past, but I still can’t help but question the wisdom in allowing a landfill located so close to the lake and a major tributary to continue to expand, at least without a huge amount of thought going into the matter. In the years to come will this “good idea”, like our other well intentioned “good ideas”, come back to haunt us by either polluting our environment or forcing us to clean them up. Quite honestly I don’t have the answer for that.
Maybe allowing the landfill to expand is entirely safe, but being a person who loves this region and who still believes that with a little ingenuity, that people, including the young, can even still make a good living here, I have some serious reservations. For example, is it really such a good idea for the well that provides drinking water to the City of Newport to be located probably less than a mile from the landfill and less than half a mile from the old burning dump? Not being a hydrologist, I honestly can’t say if there is any risk of pollution to the city’s water system or not, but on the surface level, it doesn’t seem like an ideal relationship.
As a closing comment, I have to say that I find it more than a bit ironic that there has been years of ongoing debate about what impact Citizens Utilities hydro project on the Clyde River has on the river’s fishery, a debate that resulted in the removal of a dam to allow for better fish passage, but there has been very little public discussion about the possible expansion of the landfill. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fish, and I have been an ardent supporter of the Clyde, but, sometimes I think we need to also look out for we humans while at the same time looking out for the environment and the critters that call it home.
Let’s take this thing slowly before we yet again risk regretting one of our “good ideas”.