Southbridge landfill operator offered the town royalties for land

Southbridge landfill operator offered the town royalties for land

By Brian Lee
Telegram & Gazette Staff

Posted Jun. 28, 2015 at 7:22 PM
Updated Jun 28, 2015 at 11:38 PM

SOUTHBRIDGE - Councilors last week rejected a major proposed deal with Casella Waste Systems, which is seeking to expand the landfill beyond its expected capacity in early 2017.

The council's 7-2 vote turned down a proposal to sell to Casella a 2-acre parcel of land, for landfill development that's within the existing landfill footprint, in exchange for $2 million in royalty fees through 2022, and $3.6 million from Casella for construction of a sewer pipe and leachate treatment plant and pump station.

"I am always open to a good deal for Southbridge, something we have never gotten from Casella," said Councilman Albert D. Vecchia Jr., one of the dissenters when reached after the meeting last week.

"I feel they have made millions of dollars on us and only paid us a pittance of what they’ve made," he said.

After the meeting, acting Town Manager Kevin E. Paicos asserted that he was concerned for the town.

It was an enormous loss of revenue, he said, and certain parts of what Casella asked for will go forward anyway, such as its build-out of what he called three slivers of land to deposit waste, with the town to derive little or no benefits from it.

In addition, Mr. Paicos said, there was no attempt made to amend the proposal to make it palatable in a way that it would have received a majority vote.

One of the more objectionable parts of the proposed deal, according to residents and the majority of the council, was that it called for pretreating landfill leachate before it was to be put into the town's sewage system, and for the town to be able to bring in additional leachate from other communities for treatment.

Casella presently pays to have leachate trucked from the Southbridge landfill on Barefoot Road.
The proposal called for the town to receive an estimated $35,000 a year for an indefinite number of years from effluent collection fees for Casella sewage after pre-treatment at the leachate plant.
Also the town was to receive additional revenue from the excess capacity of the leachate pretreatment plant brought in from neighboring towns or commercial users, plus sewer fees.

Regarding pushback from residents and the council's majority on the leachate provisions, Mr. Paicos said it's extremely expensive to get rid of leachate, and so having the ability to treat it can generate a lot of money for a town.


"My thought was, that money in the future would replace loss of Casella money," once the landfill reaches capacity, he said.

There are also environmental benefits to treating it here, the manager suggested.

Mr. Paicos said an environmental engineer would say it’s better to treat hazardous waste on the site where it’s generated than putting it in a truck and "running the risk that the truck can get in an accident and have a spill," he said.

Had the deal gone through the leachate from out of town would enter the landfill from Route 169 in Charlton, barely entering Southbridge, he noted.

"The idea of this was to treat leachate coming out of the landfill on site, not truck it anywhere as it is currently, reduce the environmental exposure that’s currently going on, and put the entire cost burden on Casella - but make a little money for the town."

Moreover, there are already 18 similar industrial pretreatment facilties in Southbridge, most of them at factory sites, Mr. Paicos said.

"This is nothing more than the exact same model, but, of course, because it’s Casella and the landfill the idea becomes controversial," Mr. Paicos said.

Mr. Paicos said the objective of building the sewer collector was to facilitate industrial expansion at the nearby municipal airport.

According to the proposal, the value of opening development of industrial land at the airport is unknown but would doubtlessly be in the hundreds of thousands dollars.

Meanwhile, in the face of the council's vote, the town would have to either install an on-site septic system, whose estimated cost is about $250,000 and which would be "grossly inadequate" for future expansion, or have ratepayers come up with the $1.5 million to $1.8 million that Casella had agreed to pay for the sewer collector, Mr. Paicos said.

If the town were to remove some of the proposal's more onorous provisions, it's unknown if Casella would be agreeable to returning to the negotiating table, the manager suggested.

Over the course of the three-year negotiation, Casella had always represented the proposal as a "whole deal or no deal," Mr. Paicos said.

Mr. Vecchia, when asked if he would consider an amended version of the proposal, said: "I would say the deal is 90 percent dead on my part. The question is, can Casella help us attract business to the industrial park? If so, show me."

Councilor Amelia L. Peloquin, who also voted no, said, "The landfill was supposed to last well into the next decade, even with the new tonnage rate of 405,600 a year. What happened to that capacity?
"Were the cells filled with contaminated soil, which Casella gets paid for but Southbridge does not?"
She said the council should get a good answer to that question before entering into a new contract with Casella.

Furthermore, Ms. Peloquin said, the council should consider "a clawback" to protect Southbridge if the same thing happens again.

"If Casella states that the landfill will last five more years with the capacity proposed by this agreement, and there is no capacity after three years, then Casella should owe Southbridge $500,000 for each year they were off," she suggested.

"Casella is exaggerating the capacity to make the project more attractive to the town and state" Department of Environmental Protection, she said.

"Casella needs to be held accountable for the promises they make," she said.

Contact Brian Lee at brian.lee@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BLeeTG.