What’s the problem?
Leaking landfills.
How do you organize your community to clean up or close a leaking landfill?
Americans generate a lot of trash – an estimated 250 million tons of it every year.
Some of that trash gets recycled or composted, but not enough. In New England, most of it ends up either buried in landfills or burned in incinerators. But the waste doesn’t stay there.
All landfills leak eventually. The stuff that leaks includes toxic chemicals, from batteries, household cleaners and most every other consumer product you can imagine. And once that leachate gets in the ground, it’s only a matter of time before it finds its way into surface or groundwater supplies.
Forcing a landfill owner to clean up their mess, or better yet stopping a new landfill from coming into your community, isn’t easy. But well-organized communities have learned how to stand up for their health and the environment, with our help. Among them:
- Vermont: In Coventry, neighbors joined together to oppose a plan to expand the town’s landfill, which borders the pristine Lake Memphremagog. Concerned about PFAS and other toxic chemicals leaking into the lake, residents formed Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity (DUMP) and blocked the expansion.
- Massachusetts: Residents have organized grassroots and legal action against a Southbridge landfill that they believe has polluted private drinking water wells and local wetlands.
The best long-term alternative to leaking landfills is waste reduction. That’s why community activists, including many in New Hampshire’s North Country, have banded together to promote zero waste policies and practices.