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Lawsuit filed in Woodstock landfill dumping controversy
WOODSTOCK — More than three years after 200 truckloads of contaminated construction debris were dumped at a home in the Shady neighborhood, neighbors filed a lawsuit in Ulster County Supreme Court on Thursday against the property owner, the town of Woodstock, its building inspector and the Town Board.
The lawsuit, filed by Pam and Frank Eighmey, alleges that Woodstock violated its own laws and a zoning ordinance by issuing a permit to the homeowner to clean up “dirt” that was actually construction and demolition debris that toppled onto their land, near their well. The suit calls the issuance of the permit “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law” and demands that it be rescinded. It also accuses the town of ignoring Freedom of Information Law by withholding details about the recent partial cleanup of the property at 10 Church Road, owned by Vince Conigliaro.
It’s the second time the town has been exposed to legal liability in recent weeks after four police officers and a former dispatcher filed a federal complaint alleging a hostile work environment at the police department last month.
Starting in late 2019, Vince and Gina Conigliaro hired Joseph Karolys & Son to regrade and level their property, which sloped down to Sawkill Creek. The Eighmeys and other neighbors were concerned because they knew Karolys’ reputation. In May of that year, the state Department of Environmental Conservation had raided three Karolys sites where he was accepting urban construction debris without a permit. The DEC found 39 violations of clean water and solid waste disposal laws, including the presence of mercury, lead and zinc, coal ash, and nine chemicals considered “probable carcinogens,” including DDT, a banned pesticide.
The Eighmeys asked the town of Woodstock for help and the following year, the town brought charges — 200 counts of illegal dumping of noncompostable solid waste. These were reduced to one count each against Gina Conigliaro and Joseph Karolys when they agreed to plead guilty.
The Eighmeys, the Woodstock Environmental Commission and concerned Woodstock residents urged the town to enforce its laws and order Conigliaro to remove all the fill material before it contaminated the Eighmeys’ and six neighbors’ wells and the town’s aquifer, which lies beneath the dump site.
Town Supervisor Bill McKenna said he would do just that after the guilty plea. He acknowledged that a town rule allowed him to order the cleanup and charge Conigliaro as the homeowner for the cost. In May of last year, the board wrote to Conigliaro: “Should work not commence by September 1, 2022, the Town will engage the services of a contractor to remove all the fill and dispose of it. The costs will then be levied to your property tax bill. Know that the Town Engineer estimates this cost at over $500,000.”
But months went by and nothing happened. Finally, Conigliaro came up with a plan to remove large pieces of debris and have samples of the finer material tested. This partial cleanup would cost Conigliaro about $250,000 to $300,000.
The Eighmeys were appalled. The Woodstock Human Rights Commission objected to the proposed cleanup, writing that “their plan for remediating does not contain any of the necessary safeguards for handling this kind of contaminated material and can release pollutants into the air, further spread the contaminated particulates and ultimately affect our town’s water supply.”
John Conrad, the geologist the Eighmeys hired to advise them, said Conigliaro’s plan “will not bring the 10 Church C&D dump into compliance with state and local laws and regulations.”
Still, the town engineer and Supervisor McKenna approved a permit for “dirt removal.” In an affidavit, Conrad noted that the fill is not dirt — it’s construction and demolition material, and the plan “provides no detail as to the means and methods of collection, testing procedures, QA/QC protocols, or sampling frequency or density.”
Still, the partial cleanup was completed this winter.
The Eighmeys are still worried. They have been drinking bottled water for more than three years. They and their consultant are concerned that dangerous chemicals like PFAS and PFOS, often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down in the environment, are common in the sediment of construction and demolition waste and can easily migrate through soil and into groundwater.
Widespread calls for a complete cleanup have continued. On Friday, the day after the Eighmeys filed their suit, Supervisor McKenna posted a letter from the DEC that he called “good news”: According to DEC Regional Director Kelly Turturro, the DEC observed the site and reviewed the homeowner’s test results and “does not have evidence that hazardous waste is present at the Site or that any pollutant is present at a level considered hazardous to the environment.”
Alex Bolotow, a member of Woodstock’s Environmental Commission, said the DEC’s inspection was only visual and a few samples taken on behalf of the property owner were not sufficient to be conclusive. She feels the DEC has actually been expecting Woodstock to enforce its own laws, including one that prohibits placing construction and demolition debris or noncompostable solid waste of any kind on any property within the town.
Bolotow is among McKenna’s fiercest critics. He removed her from the chairmanship of the environmental commission in what she believes was retaliation for her disagreement with his decisions on the Shady dump. She points out that McKenna is mentioned 49 times in the Eighmeys’ suit against the town, often for his contradictory statements, and feels that McKenna is putting Woodstock in legal jeopardy.
“Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like the actions of the supervisor will cost Woodstock a lot of money — their legal fees, our legal fees and whatever relief the court sees fit,” she told the Times Union.
Woodstock’s legal woes are bound to be on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Councilmember Bennet Ratcliff is running against McKenna. He’s been a proponent of the complete removal of the contaminated fill in Shady.
“The town of Woodstock has a law that has been broken and the supervisor has failed to enforce it,” Ratcliff said. “If Bill McKenna would just do his job correctly, these kinds of lawsuits would not be mounting on the town of Woodstock.”
McKenna announced several weeks ago that he would not be campaigning for his post as supervisor, but a support group, “Friends of Bill McKenna,” has bought an ad in Hudson Valley One supporting him. McKenna is running for his fifth two-year term as supervisor.
