Business Group Seeks To Dump Composting

The East Hampton Business Alliance has asked the town to overhaul the way it handles solid waste, suggesting that it mothball its $5 million, three-year-old composting plant.

At a Jan. 27 meeting with the Town Councilmen who oversee the program, alliance directors criticized composting as being too costly for business. Calling the future of composting unpromising, they said trucking more garbage out of town would reduce both the townwide garbage tax and carters' bills.

"We understand that the facility was built in another time by other people, but are dismayed by current government's apparent commitment to proceed blindly with what seems a seriously flawed project," said the alliance's executive director, Sherry B. Wolfe, in a Feb. 3 letter that followed the meeting.

Original Goal

The composting plant is a part of the $11 million solid waste facility built under the Democratic administration of former Supervisor Tony Bullock.

With the stated goal of intensive recycling, rather than concern about taxes, Mr. Bullock considered the design and completion of the facility among his finest achievements. He is now chief of staff to United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

On Jan. 27, directors of the alliance told the Councilmen who oversee the program, Peter Hammerle, a Democrat, and Len Bernard, a Republican, that they were unconvinced there would ever be a sufficient flow of compostable waste into the plant or that there would ever be much of a market for the end product. They said it should be turned it into a trash transfer station or leased to a private recycling company, according to Arthur Dodge, one of the directors.

Shocked

Among the directors at the session were Bonnie Bistrian Krupinski, a member of the family developing a golf course in Amagansett, Robert Denny of the Cook Agency, Debra Lobel, an attorney, Randall Parsons, a private land planner, and others.

They argued that compostable waste could be trucked out of town to incinerators or to private recycling facilities, in the same way nonrecyclables are, at an estimated cost of about $1 million a year.

"I was shocked. After all the work this town has done trying to get everyone to think about the importance of recycling. I tell you, it took me a few days to get over that meeting," said Councilman Hammerle.

Cheapest Way

At $54 a ton and falling, paying a carter to take the town's trash out of town is the cheapest method of getting rid of it. Recycling and composting require processing, by hand and machine, to make the end products salable. And, the market for recyclables has yet to recover from the nose dive it took in 1995.

These facts have been at the core of a longstanding disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about how to handle waste disposal. The differences of opinion have intensified since the Republicans took control of the Town Board last year, although the two Councilmen overseeing the recycling and composting plants represented each party.

Councilman Bernard had campaigned for a Town Board seat three times by calling for an end to what he called the Democrats' costly recycling philosophy.

"There's this idealistic debate with two extremes going on here. . . . There's the idea that recycling is better for the environment and that makes it the politically correct thing to do. Then there's the very dollars-and-cents business view that says it's not profitable. I think the alliance is taking that extreme," said Councilman Bernard.

However, Mr. Bernard said this week, "My understanding is we would give the plant a chance, to see what it can do when it's completely up and running." He added that he had told the alliance's directors that any evaluation of composting should be put off for eight or nine months.

Mr. Bernard said he spent Saturday, the day a new law went into effect making it mandatory to separate compostable waste from the rest of the garbage, at the town dump, and found residents and business owners "receptive."

Perplexed, Upset

"I think with a little education we are going to generate more material, but I agree with the alliance we don't have to overspend to do it," he added.

Both Councilmen were perplexed by the alliance's follow-up letter, saying they had asked the directors on Jan. 27 for patience with getting the composting operation up to full speed.

Mr. Hammerle said he was particularly upset to hear Mr. Parsons, who often works with preservation groups and is a Democrat, criticize the waste management program, and particularly on the basis of economics.

In the last year, the Town Board majority has curtailed spending on waste disposal with a hiring freeze, by firing the recycling coordinator, and, with Mr. Hammerle's reluctant let's-try-it-and-see, discontinuing the baling of newspaper, plastic, glass, and other recyclables.

David Paolelli, who manages the facility, said about 17 percent of the supposedly nonrecyclable trash destined in 1995 to be carted out of town had been diverted to the then-new compost plant. The plant ran at full speed, though not at full capacity, in 1995. It was shut down for months, however, last year, for repainting by the original contractor.

That 17 percent could portend an equivalent increase in the volume of what is trucked away and the estimated cost. It also could be used as a rough measure of how much compostable material is contained in the town's waste stream, excluding what is previously separated by self-haulers.

The town has made several attempts since the plant opened to encourage voluntary participation among those who generate large quantities of compostable waste, such as restaurants, with limited success.

In addition, a compost refining system meant to sift out undesirable particles has sat in boxes for months, while mountains of unrefined compost grow up around the plant and engineers struggle with the contractor hired, after three go-arounds with the bidding system, to install it. Word this week is that the system will be operable by April.

Officials admit the financial incentive, a lower tipping fee for recyclables, also has failed to inspire participation. They hope that making separation mandatory and threatening prosecution will.

"We won't know whether there is a market [for compost] until we have a high quality finished product, and we won't have a finished product until the refining system is installed, and in the meantime we have to work with the carters and the business owners on getting [compostables] to come in clean. I told the alliance that we shouldn't jump to conclusions," said Mr. Bernard.

Mr. Dodge, a Republican Committeeman, told The Star this week that nothing the Councilmen said last month gave him any reason for optimism.

There appeared to be a subtle difference among some of the alliance directors, though, with Mr. Parsons saying he had a "moderate" position. He called the Jan. 27 meeting "a healthy dialogue." He did not see it as a demand to shut the plant down immediately.

"We discussed privatization. We discussed a whole range of options. My feeling was that they didn't seem to have some of the basic information to make a decision about whether composting was a good thing to do right now," he said.