Once again the Town of North Hempstead is embroiled in a battle over the flow control of garbage.

Fifteen years ago this same topic surfaced and in the end, after many meetings and many legal battles, two of the villages, Village of New Hyde Park and Village of Westbury, opted out and chose not to send their garbage to the town's transfer station in Port Washington citing the exorbitant prices for tip fees that the town charged.

At the outset of the hearing North Hempstead Town Supervisor Jon Kaiman introduced the topic by saying, "The Town of North Hempstead has historically been recognized as the Solid Waste Management Authority (SWMA) designated entity from the State of New York...

"Fifteen years ago 'flow control' was the law of the land. All the villages and all the unincorporated areas within our larger community had all their waste disposed of in the municipal dumps that are based near the transfer station. Before that, there were other locations in the town where there were dumps as well. All those dumps have been closed and they all carried costs even to this day.

"The Supreme Court, 15 years ago, ruled that flow control cannot be allowed anymore and just last year, in 2007, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, basically indicating there is a compelling reason for municipalities to control the flow of solid waste within its community.

"We believe that flow control would reduce costs but would allow us to ensure that recyclables, which is the priority of this administration and government, and most of the communities as well, will be monitored and enforced in ways we are unable to do today. The environmental issues and the flow of the trucks will be taken into account and so there will be an environmental benefit as well."

Mayor of North Hills Marvin Natiss said, "As chairperson of the committee, I am speaking on behalf of the Village Officials Association (VOA). The VOA became involved in February when you invited us to Harbor Links to review the Request for Proposal (RFP)...Throughout the law, I do not see any opportunity for any village to 'opt' out. That was one of the major issues that we had in our prior discussions when we indicated to you that we would like to work together with the town. After all, we are 31 villages in the town of the 64 villages in Nassau County. So we do represent a substantial interest in terms of numbers of people and mayors and trustees.

"We feel there should be an opt out for the villages. So, if we can do it for less, we should be allowed to do so."

Mayor Samansky said he was the president of the Great Neck Village Officials Association, past president of the Nassau County VOA and a member of the SWMA Committee presently established.

He said, "I was also the chairman, 15 years ago, that negotiated the agreement with the town and we are in our 13th year. It is a pleasure for me to address equal partners in municipal government and I would remind the council that 28 of the 31 villages are signed into this 15-year agreement.

"We did it because we negotiated. We have two more years to go. For you to say that certain villages are not paying their fair share is a false argument. Fifteen years ago we negotiated that very clause and the amount that we are paying is part of the total agreement which included the right of villages to opt out. The proposed law has many exceptions and I understand where you are coming from, but I think you should add an exception for villages. But, let us sit down the way we started to negotiate a renewal of this agreement. Flow control strikes at the heart of home rule. Mr. Spitzer has gone and takeover fever and steamrolling are over. I must tell you the Nassau County VOA Committee and the town negotiations were ongoing and where this flow control proposal came from I have no idea...unless, you are breaking that commitment to negotiate with the villages."

James McCloat, the Superintendent of Public Works for the Village of New Hyde Park, was the next up to the microphone. He said, "We went through this before...We were one of the mavericks or that is what we were considered because we chose to do our own fighting for our taxpayers. We have been successful in protecting our residents ever since paying tipping fees in the $60 per ton range while at the same time the Town of North Hempstead was $104 a ton going to $150. We still pay way below what you charge.

"The Town of North Hempstead, as we see it, will be nothing more than a garbage broker. The town really doesn't perform any services for the village except to tell the villages how, when and why we can dump our garbage. They know no other function, but to raise the rates. Back in 1989, when this all started, the rates were $54 a ton. Three years later in 1992 the rate was $104 and that's what triggered us to get out and go on our own."

The next speaker was a resident of Roslyn who lives about a block from West Shore Road. She noted that garbage trucks continuously come up and down Old Northern Boulevard "spewing garbage" and "oozing stuff that smells quite bad." She said, "This is what we live with now before you are going to add any additional garbage. We also have a problem with garbage trucks coming up Mott Avenue and that's not supposed to happen. Some of the residents have called the garbage companies directly and asked them not to do this. It lasts a couple of weeks and then they are right back to the same thing. On garbage days you cannot go out of your house because the stench is that bad. I'm not concerned about the money, the mayors, but what I am concerned with is the quality of my life and the lives of those who live in this area in Roslyn."

Mayor Petruccio said, "This is an issue of choice and home rule. In 1992 we opted out of this arrangement and went on the spot market. By my calculations, with just this year's 6,000 tons of garbage, at a $10 a ton savings, and that's a low figure, we saved over that period of time a million dollars for our residents.

"Now let me speak to another issue. Part of our village is in the Town of Hempstead, so I don't want to separate my routes to accommodate this issue.

"Fundamentally, I have a different position than the other mayors. I don't want to sit at the table, I don't want to negotiate, I don't want to talk about it. Basically, I will tell you that if you stick with this we will sue."

The major concern of attorney Lawrence Boes, in objecting to the new flow control rules, is the fact that Westbury will have to travel at least 16 miles with increased transportation costs to a facility in Port Washington that he described as a "Rube Goldberg" apparatus.

He said, "This was cobbled together in 1991 following the state-mandated Long Island Landfill Law, which closed the North Hempstead landfills east of West Shore Road and the abandonment of plans for a resource recovery facility within the town. The nature and location of this transfer station is totally unsatisfactory for a number of reasons principally because it is inefficiently located on the only site available to the town in the early nineties. It is an open air facility located in or near wetlands at the foot of Hempstead Harbor, close to a condo development and between the Village of Flower Hill and Roslyn south of Bar Beach-North Hempstead Park."

Boes concluded, "This law is designed to increase tonnage processed in the town's transfer station, increase tip fees based on monopoly rates for the town's SWMA, increase contributions to the town's own general funds by allocation of additional administration, legal and accounting and enforcement costs and increased payroll for SWMA. The town pretends there is some environmental benefit gained through its administration of this solid-waste program, paradoxically by raising rates it hopes to pay for increased law-enforcement. But this program, like any private solid waste operator, which the town contracts with or which operates outside the town's management, is supervised environmentally by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. But the transfer station operated in the open air without any enclosure or usable doors is the worst offender. No private operator would ever be approved for the operation of a solid waste project in wetlands close to Hempstead Harbor and one mile south of public beaches. The town hopes to improve its enforcement of its solid waste program, but an economically sound program creates its own incentives."

Kaiman commented, "Are you volunteering your village for a transfer station? The primary goal of this practice is to stop the fact that recyclables manage to end up in the general stream of garbage and we tend to end that practice and our ability to control flow would enable us to do that."

Mayor Ernest Strada of the Village of Westbury said that his village has been through this before and it doesn't make sense to cart their garbage when they can dump for much cheaper practically across the street. He, too, urged for an opt out clause.

Kaiman said, "We hope that we can come up with a resolution that makes sense for every resident in our community. We want people to pay as little as possible for the removal of the garbage."

The board then voted to hold the discussion over until the next North Hempstead Town Board meeting to be held on July 29 at 7:30 p.m. at North Hempstead Town Hall, 200 Plandome Road, Manhasset.