It looks like OCRRA will have to cool its heels on the Cortland-Onondaga Regional Solid Waste Partnership. The Onondaga County Legislature won’t vote on the agreement until this summer.
The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA) Administration Committee recommended April 28 that the OCRRA board to approve the partnership, commonly called “Ash for Trash,” which would allow Cortland County to dispose of 25,000 to 30,000 tons of solid waste at the OCRRA waste-to-energy facility in Jamesville. Onondaga County would then be allowed to truck 90,000 of ash from the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant to Cortland County’s landfill.
“OCRRA’s Administration Committee moved a resolution expressing intent to sign an inter-municipal agreement with Cortland County to the OCRRA board for consideration on May 6,” reads a press release from OCRRA. “Execution of the agreement is contingent upon future legislative action by both the Cortland and Onondaga county legislatures.”
Both county legislatures have approved the proposal’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), which is the last step in the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process. Engineering firm Barton and LoGuidice prepared the FEIS.
“I’m very happy with the terms we were able to negotiate with OCRRA,” said Cortland County Solid Waste Committee Chair Tom Hartnett. “We have built a strong working relationship through this process and I look forward to working together.”
According to the Cortland Standard, the Cortland County Legislature is expected to vote on “Ash for Trash” in June.
Ryan McMahon, chair of the Onondaga County Legislature, said the deal will not be on the environmental committee agenda this month. The full legislature may not vote on the proposal until June or July.
“One of [my] concerns is what kind of recycling program is in place in Cortland County,” McMahon said. “If we’re going to be burning trash, we need to know what we’re burning. We’re ready to move forward with some of the details, like releasing the SEQR, but I’m not ready to change the importation law.”
In 1992, the Onondaga County Legislature banned the importation of trash into Onondaga County.
The Cortland County Legislature released the terms of the intermunicipal agreement April 28. Cortland County will receive $17 per ton of ash dumped in its landfill: $14.50 per ton for the ash residue itself and an environmental program support fee of $2.50 per ton, which will go to fund recycling efforts. The base fee for the ash residue is set to increase by 1.5 percent each year.
McMahon said he and his fellow legislators wanted to look into a system of “checks and balances” to make sure Cortland County maintains its proposed improvements to recycling and other green actions.
The intermunicipal agreement states that Cortland County must send OCRRA a copy of their NYSDEC Planning Unit Recycling Report and an annual report of how many recyclables have been diverted from the waste stream. Cortland County also must “identify and provide resources to facilitate OCRRA’s training/assistance efforts.”
