It’s not often that Seneca Lake Guardian agrees with Seneca Meadows. In fact, this might be a first.
Seneca Meadows is the operator of New York’s largest landfill, and we’ve been fighting tooth and nail to make sure the landfill closes once and for all. But in a recent Finger Lakes Times article, Seneca Meadows District Manager Kyle Black made a point worth acknowledging: New York needs a realistic plan to manage its waste.
Black said the company supports “increased recycling, organics diversion, waste reduction, and other policies that reduce disposal.” He also argued that closing landfills without alternatives in place would only shift the waste and environmental impacts elsewhere.
On that first point, we agree. New York cannot simply make its garbage disappear into thin air. But he’s wrong to suggest that keeping Seneca Meadows open for another 15 years is the answer.
New York already has a plan to address this problem. The state’s 2023-32 Solid Waste Management Plan calls for reducing waste, expanding recycling and composting, and moving toward a circular economy where landfills are a last resort. So, why aren’t we following it?
Instead of putting that plan into action, New York continues to rely on massive landfills such as Seneca Meadows to take in thousands of tons of garbage every day. And now Waste Connections, the Texas-based corporation that owns Seneca Meadows, wants to expand the landfill by another 47 acres and extend its operations through at least 2050.
We can’t have it both ways.
Seneca Meadows argues that we need somewhere to put our garbage until we come up with better solutions. But how long are we supposed to wait, especially when we know what those solutions are? If we keep expanding landfills every time they approach capacity, what incentive is there for the state to make the investments needed to reduce waste in the first place? And why should communities like Seneca Falls be expected to shoulder that burden indefinitely?
We’re not pretending we can eliminate all waste overnight. It will take time. But the cleaner future we envision can only be achieved if we start putting these plans into concrete action. Until then, Kyle Black and other landfill operators will continue to profit off of the state’s inactivity.
New York needs to invest in recycling and composting infrastructure, reduce unnecessary packaging, and hold producers accountable for the waste they create. Legislation like the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would help accomplish exactly that: shifting responsibility onto the companies producing excessive packaging instead of leaving taxpayers to deal with their exorbitance instead.
These are practical steps New York can take now, which are consistent with the state’s own waste management goals.
And contrary to what the landfill industry would have us believe, closing Seneca Meadows does not mean all of its garbage must be dumped in another community. An analysis of publicly available landfill reports has identified substantial remaining disposal capacity across New York. We need to manage that capacity responsibly and equitably, while reducing our reliance on landfills altogether.
If we let the status quo remain as is, the Finger Lakes community will continue to shoulder the price of the state’s failure to act.
Seneca Meadows is already New York’s largest landfill and likely its largest single source of methane emissions. Here in the Finger Lakes, families live with the landfill’s odor, children attend school in its shadow, and local businesses worry about what another 25 years of expansion would mean for the region.
In a recent Seneca Lake Guardian survey of more than 700 nearby residents, people reported headaches, respiratory problems, and other health concerns they associate with living near the landfill. Our $4 billion wine, agriculture, and tourism economy, which supports more than 60,000 jobs, also has a great deal at stake.
These are the costs that get left out when the conversation focuses only on where the garbage will go.
Seneca Meadows was supposed to close in December of 2025, when it was projected to reach capacity. Instead, it continues operating under provisions of the State Administrative Procedure Act while the Department of Environmental Conservation reviews its application to expand.
Gov. Hochul and the DEC have a choice to make. They can allow New York’s largest landfill to grow even larger, or they can deny the expansion and get serious about implementing the waste reduction policies the state has already adopted.
Nobody is suggesting that closing Seneca Meadows will solve the state’s entire waste problem, but continuing to expand it is a step in the wrong direction.
Kyle Black says New York needs a realistic approach to waste management. On that, we agree. What we don’t agree on is the idea that we need to keep doing business as usual rather than implementing solutions.
New York has spent enough time talking about reducing waste. We have a plan and the policies to move us in the right direction, what we need now is the willingness to act.
And that starts with saying no to another expansion of Seneca Meadows.