Orange County Landfill site reclassified by state hazardous waste program

The Orange County Landfill site in Goshen has recently been reclassified by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). According to the DEC, the site no longer presents a significant threat to public health and/or the environment.

A list of disposal sites is kept by the DEC via its Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Site Program, a state Superfund Program for identifying, investigating, and cleaning up sites where the disposal of hazardous waste may present a threat to public health and/or the environment. The listed sites go through a process of investigation, evaluation, cleanup and monitoring in several stages.

Listed as reasons for the site’s reclassification are:

• Human exposures to residual contamination at the site are being addressed through a deed restriction that will limit the use and development of the site and prohibit the use of groundwater at the site as the source of potable or process water without prior approval.

• Future excavations will be conducted in accordance with an excavation plan to ensure that human exposures to residually contaminated soils are properly managed.

• Compliance with the approved site management plan and periodic certification by the County to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will ensure that institutional and engineering controls remain effective.

Located south of Route 17M in the Town of Goshen, the Orange County landfill site is about 300 acres in size with the landfill itself covering close to 75 acres in the southern portion. Now inactive, the site began accepting mixed municipal waste, sewage sludge, waste oil, septic system waste and industrial sludge in 1974 and ended operations in January 1992.

According to the DEC, the primary contaminants “of concern” before remediation were magnesium, ammonia, chloride, phenolics, arsenic, chromium, lead, selenium, and sodium in groundwater and trichloroethylene, arsenic, cadmium, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, lead, and zinc in sediments. The site record notes that remedial actions to remove contaminants have “successfully achieved soil cleanup objectives industrial use” and that “residual contamination in the groundwater and sediment is being managed under a Site Management Plan.”

The site record does note, however, that the landfill still contains “contaminants of concern” including tetrachloroethylene, solvents such as methanol, ethanol, toluene, benzene and nitric, hydrofluoric and glacial acetic acids.

The waste disposal site program recommends that land owners with property adjacent to the site or who are renting or leasing property to someone else share the reclassification information with them accordingly.

More information can be found using DEC’s Environmental Site Remediation Database Search engine which can be found at www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/derexternal/index.cfm?pageid=3. Enter code 336007.

Site specific documents may be found online through the DEC info Locator at: https://www.dec.ny.gov/data/DecDocs/336007/.