A lawsuit filed today against Seneca Meadows Inc. and the state Department of Environmental Conservation seeks a court order to block the landfill’s proposed expansion on the grounds that unabated landfill odors violate its neighbors’ constitutional right to breathe clean air.
The complaint was filed in Albany County Supreme Court by two environmental groups, two businesses and two individuals who claim to have been harmed by odors that are both extremely annoying and potentially hazardous to their health.
“Any approval of SMI’s proposed expansion by NYSDEC would continue and exacerbate the existing nuisance experienced by the plaintiffs, as well as the substantial interference to the rights of the public at large in violation of the Green Amendment,” the complaint alleges.
SMI, the state’s largest landfill, is running out of space. Its DEC-issued state permit expires in December 2025. It has applied to the agency for a new permit to add 47 acres of new landfill liner area and to increase its height by 69.5 feet — enough to provide the capacity to continue operations through 2040.
The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is the environmental group Seneca Lake Guardian, which has led a recent public campaign to try to compel SMI to close in 2025.
The plaintiffs are represented by Philip Gitlen of the Albany law firm Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna and Douglas Zamelis, an environmental attorney from Cooperstown. Gitlin is a former general counsel of the DEC.
The DEC is also a defendant in a similar January 2022 lawsuit against the state’s second largest landfill, High Acres, over alleged failures to mitigate odors at that facility southeast of Rochester. The case was filed just four weeks after the effective date of the state’s Green Amendment, which guarantees a constitutional right to “clean air, clean water and a healthful environment.”
In the High Acres case, a Monroe County Supreme Court dismissed the landfill — but not the DEC — as a…
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