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Compost Trouble Down on the Farm?

Posted on: Monday, 19 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Mark Harrington, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Jun. 19--The compost wars are heating up in Brookhaven Town.

Just when it seemed Westbury-based Long Island Compost had found a solution to years of complaints about odors from its composting operations by contracting with farmers to host its composting piles, some residents say the problems have only multiplied.

Earlier this month, Long Island Compost president Charles Vigliotti and his lobbyist, Armand D'Amato, met at Vigliotti's request in Albany with representatives of the state attorney general's office to discuss the complaints and possible ways of addressing them, Vigliotti said.

The meeting followed a flood of complaints to the attorney general's office over the past several months. "We just need the odor problems to be addressed," said Judith Enck, policy adviser in the attorney general's office. "It shouldn't be this hard, and the complaints have been significant."

In a Newsday story June 9, the company said some composting hills - called windrows - maintained on farms too near residential areas would be moved. But the piles of decomposing leaves, grass and other yard debris can never get far enough away for some residents.

Two months ago, Manorville resident Susan Sineo said, she noticed flocks of seagulls dive-bombing a compost "dump" on a farm near her home and alerted the Department of Environmental Conservation. She said she was later told Long Island Compost had dumped fish heads from a New York City market in the heap to accelerate decomposition.

Promise of no more fish

Vigliotti last week acknowledged that an outside contractor hired to bring in mixed fruit and vegetable waste "evidently mixed in some fish and meat waste," in violation of DEC rules. "We have since barred that company from doing business with us," he said. "It will never happen again."

Sineo has led a steady war against the company at town hearings, through complaints to legislators and the DEC, and on her Web site, www.compost alert.com. Her 6-year-old daughter, she said, has developed asthma and suffered two bouts of pneumonia in the past year, which she attributed to three windrows composting within a quarter mile of her home.

The composting operations "shouldn't be in a residential area," Sineo said, charging that Long Island Compost "leaves a path of destruction everywhere it goes."

But Edda Dosiak, whose family owns farms on which several active composting operations are housed, disputes that the odor issues are more than periodic.

"It only stinks when they mix it," she said last week at the family farmstand a few hundred feet from several long rows of composting material. "When it's first put in it's [the odor] very strong, and when he turns it, yeah, [the odor lasts] maybe for an hour. I don't find anything wrong with that."

The Dosiaks have come to depend on the payments and the free compost that Long Island Compost makes available to them each year to lease their land, and they resent homeowners telling them how to run farms their families have operated for decades. "These people who are complaining - tell them to go back where they came from," she said.

Officials in the middle

But the DEC and Brookhaven Town are in an odd middle ground when it comes to the complaints. As part of its environmentally friendly waste management program, the DEC worked with Charles Vigliotti and his co-owner brothers in devising the on-farm composting program, and Brookhaven has a contract with Long Island Compost to dump its leaves, grass and other organic waste.

Brookhaven dump trucks are among those that rumble through the Yaphank facility near the home of Diane Barone, who says conditions have become unbearable.

"Today it stinks over here really bad," she said last week, adding that the compost transfer station, which holds the debris before it's shipped to farms, smells worse than the nearby Brookhaven landfill.

Relief in sight?

Other problems residents cite include piles of compost and other organic debris higher than the 20-foot and 30-foot height regulations, clouds of dust from screening operations and trucks operating on dirt roads, and work that continues on into the night.

Donna Cioffi, a 19-year resident of Yaphank, said that despite repeated assurances from the company, problems persist. "I'm getting to the point where I just want to get a lawyer," she said.

But some relief could be in sight.

John Burn, a legislative aide for Brookhaven councilwoman Connie Keppert, said recent discussions with the company have been productive, and he suggested issues could be resolved at a July 7 court hearing. He said town officials met earlier this year with Armand D'Amato, brother of former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, to resolve some issues.

A source close to the discussions said Long Island Compost has proposed installing a 16-foot fence and planting trees to buffer the operations from homes, among other measures.

In addition, Vigliotti said he's talking with the DEC about using limestone in compost piles to address odor problems, and he's working on a plan to centralize some operations in a more remote location, further from residences. He declined to name the new location.

Peter Scully, regional director of the DEC, said complaints about Long Island Compost reached a high point when the company went from operating on-farm sites that typically handled up to 3,000 cubic yards of compost to sites processing more than 10,000 cubic yards, a level that requires a registration permit.

Despite strained relations with some residents, Long Island Compost has enjoyed generally positive relations with agencies such as the DEC and local farm groups, and it has steered clear of trouble since a predecessor company, Vigliotti Brothers Carting Corp., was charged along with dozens of other Long Island companies in a federal racketeering case.

Past case settled

The case was settled in 1997, and as part of the settlement, according to a consent decree, co-owner Arnold Vigliotti and Vigliotti Brothers Carting were permanently barred from the solid waste disposal industry, with the exception of a composting facility, and from knowingly associating with members or associates of organized crime for business.

Without admitting guilt, the carting company paid $175,000 to settle the charges, and there have been no charges of any violation of the consent decree since the settlement. Charles Vigliotti declined to discuss the matter, calling it settled.

He said LI Compost, which is considering out-of-state expansion and going public, is eager to address issues raised by residents and regulators once it gets the proper approvals. "We're awaiting DEC approval that will let us centralize operations in locations that are extremely isolated and allow us to use odor-neutralizing limestone so we can do our work quietly and with zero impact," he said. "The meeting with the attorney general was to facilitate that."

Said Enck of the attorney general's office, "I hope what happens next is that the odor problems go away."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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