Will Seneca Meadows stay open in 2026?

Although its closure date was set for the end of 2025, the Seneca Meadows landfill continues as a waste disposal site, as legal actions play out in the courts. 

Continuing operations are opposed by some groups and individuals in the community. Among them is Mark Pitifer, who, as communications administrator for Waterloo Container, spends each work day right across the street from the 350-acre landfill, which is nearly as tall as the First Federal Plaza building in downtown Rochester. 

Pitifer says that the odor has made it difficult to attract and retain employees to the company.

“We’re the gateway to the Finger Lakes. You get off the Thruway and you’re greeted with landfill in your visual and odor in your nose,” he says. “It’s a catastrophe.” 

Along Route 414 near the town of Seneca Falls, the landfill is permitted to accept 6,000 tons of refuse a day. From 2020 to 2023, it accepted over 8 million tons of waste. At its current rate, it is quickly running out of space.

Seneca Meadows’ operator believes the solution is to expand the landfill with its Valley Infill Project, which began in earnest about three years ago with an environmental impact statement submitted to the state Department of Environmental Conservation in December 2022.

The project would fill in the area between the horseshoe-shaped landfill, which was a former superfund site, as part of Tantalo Landfill. The infill project would add 47 acres and increase its height by 70 feet. 

The expansion would keep the site operational until 2040. It has yet to be approved, with Seneca Meadows resubmitting environmental impact statements and receiving extensions from the DEC.

(The Beacon did not receive a response from Kyle Black, the district manager for Seneca Meadows.)

The environmental group Seneca Lake Guardian argues that expanding Seneca Meadows is the exact opposite direction to go. The group maintains that the landfill has already done much environmental, economic, and physical health damage to a region that relies on its natural resources and beauty for prosperity. Expanding it would worsen that damage.

“Our community is already dealing with insurmountable public health, economic, and quality-of-life issues,” says Yvonne Taylor, the group’s co-founder and vice president. “To think about expansion, all those things would get compounded even more.”

Seneca Lake Guardian also claims that the landfill should not be operating at all for various legal reasons. Chief among them, a local law set Seneca Meadows’ closure for the end of 2025.

However, that law was challenged by Seneca Meadows’ parent company, Texas-based Waste Connections. The suit is currently in the courts with no timeline for a decision. In addition, the application extension for the Valley Infill Project allows for continued operation with their existing permit under the State Administrative Procedure Act.

Further, the Seneca Falls town board last March approved a 15-year host agreement, which would go into effect if the Infill Valley Project gets DEC approval.

While it is aware of the negative connotations associated with a landfill, Seneca Meadows has consistently said the service it provides is essential and the company is a valuable contributor to the local economy. The operator also has said that health and environmental concerns are unrelated to the landfill or can be mitigated with proper procedure and technology.

“New York is in the process of instituting a series of bold environmental policies following the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019,” Black wrote in an opinion piece published by the Beacon in 2024. “Seneca Meadows will play a critical role in helping New York reach those environmental goals. The local men and women on our team proudly do this essential work every day!”

“They absolutely are an essential business. They have some of the most hardworking men and women that you’ve ever met working at the facility. I know some of those people, they are good people. There is absolutely no gripes with the workers there,” Pitifer comments. “It’s the parent company, Waste Connections, that is a for-profit, multibillion-dollar publicly traded company that tries to influence elections and expand the landfill.”

“The Valley Infill expansion has too many health-related unknowns and uncertainties environmentally for a rubber stamp of approval to be placed on there (by DEC),” he adds.

Still in business

In 2016, the Seneca Falls town board passed Local Law 3, banning waste disposal facilities in 

town but allowing Seneca Meadows to continue operating until Dec. 31, 2025.

Almost a month into 2026, Seneca Meadows remains open; the year following Local Law 3’s approval, Seneca Meadows filed a lawsuit challenging it and setting off a series of court battles that are still ongoing. Amid that confusion, it has chosen to continue operating. (Its Valley Infill Project submissions have given Seneca Meadows extensions from DEC to continue operations.)

“They agreed to their closure date with the state and the town,” says Pitifer. “And then they ripped the rug out from under us, including the business owners like (Waterloo Container founder) Bill Lutz, who put good faith into that agreement and was under the impression that they would cease their operations when we agreed.” 

Although Seneca Meadows is accepting refuse, it has been observed to be less than the typical amount. Taylor believes this is to “play out the clock” and continue operating for as long as possible, since exceeding capacity would mean Seneca Meadows would have to cease operations.

From 2020 to 2023, most waste accepted by Seneca Meadows came from either the New York City or Hudson Valley regions, according to the most recent environmental impact statement that Seneca Meadows submitted in July 2024. Combined, the regions made up at least half of all waste and averaged over 1 million tons.

The next-largest contributors include the Capital Region, which averaged 353,476 tons of waste per year, or 17.3 percent, and sources outside New York, which averaged 117,646 tons, or 13.9 percent.

“The trash has to go somewhere, as everyone likes to say,” says Billsboro Winery owner Vinny Aliperti. “But the Finger Lakes have taken their fair share of trash already.”

The report does note that the nearby counties of Cayuga, Onondaga, Schuyler, Seneca, Tioga, Tompkins, Wayne, and Yates all rely on Seneca Meadows for a “significant percentage of their needed disposal capacity.” Combined, those counties averaged 163,016 tons of waste per year.

Seneca Lake Guardian recently released results of a survey of more than 700 residents living near Seneca Meadows, which encompassed the variety of concerns raised by the organization. Sixty-nine percent of respondents could smell the odor at their home, 53 percent at school, and dozens of households reported needing to remove their children from school due to odors.

Seneca Meadows says it has worked to address odor issues by monitoring levels of hydrogen sulfide, which is the main compound in landfill odors. Since 2022, 98 percent of the time hydrogen sulfide has not been detected.

“It’s right out of the corporate playbook to deny and diminish the reality of life that the public is experiencing by living next to this mountain of garbage,” says Taylor. “It’s their attempt to remain viable in a community that has spoken out loudly against this landfill’s operation and continuation.”

The Seneca Lake Guardian survey also noted common health impacts among respondents. Among households within 10 miles of the landfill, 27 percent reported someone with asthma or another respiratory issue, and 26 percent with cancer or heart disease.

Seneca Lake Guardian also says that the area has been identified as a “cancer cluster,” with lung cancer rates 30 to 35 percent higher than in other areas.

“Bill Lutz’s wife passed away from cancer in 2019, and had no family history of it. They went to some of the best specialists all over the country, who all told them it was environmentally caused,” Pitifer says. “Now, we can never definitively say that the landfill was the cause of that. But it does make you wonder.”

An independent study was commissioned by Seneca Meadows and released in 2024 as part of the Valley Infill Project. It concluded that there was “no evidence that the Seneca Meadows Landfill contributes to the lung cancer incidence in its vicinity, regardless of whether a cancer cluster does or does not exist.”

Waiting on approvals

Taylor observes that in the time following Local Law 3’s approval, town board leadership shifted toward favoring Seneca Meadows.

She believes that this was accomplished by targeted political action in the form of Responsible Solutions for New York, a PAC funded by Waste Connections. The PAC’s presence has been felt in local elections. Mailers in the 2021 cycle supported the eventual winning candidates Kaitlyn Laskoski and Frank Sinicropi, for example.

According to the state Board of Elections, the PAC spent $108,787 in 2021, $108,152 in 2023, and $127,928 in 2025. Most money went to print ads, campaign literature, and campaign mailings. Mercury Public Affairs and Fulcrum Campaign Strategies, two communications firms, were paid the most for these services. No candidate in those races received a direct contribution from the PAC.

While the Responsible Solutions for New York website is now defunct, snapshots from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine show that the site only endorsed races in Seneca Falls.

“It’s divided town politics for decades. You get mailer after mailer, text blasts, emails, video advertisements, social media advertisements,” Pitifer says. “It’s disgusting. It floods the market and makes people on fixed income think, ‘We can’t have the landfill close, because services will get cut and our taxes will go up,’ when there’s no proof of that.”

Another section of Seneca Lake Guardian’s survey found that 83 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with how elected officials have handled the issue and that more than half (53 percent) have considered moving away.

Some more recently elected officials have been more critical of Seneca Meadows, however. For example, Jackson Puylara, a sales representative for Waterloo Container, was elected to the board in 2023 and has voted against the landfill in a number of proposals.

Gabby Cosentino, who was elected to the Seneca Falls town board in 2025, has seen the landfill divide people in her community. She still believes that Local Law 3 is important to the town’s future.

“Some people say the landfill is poisoning us and other people say we can’t survive without the landfill’s money,” Cosentino says. “It really makes things seem black and white. Do we care more about health or do we care more about money? Without the politics of the landfill entrenched in every issue, we would be able to govern more effectively. LL3’s environmental focus was to protect local agriculture, tourism, and water quality. The law isn’t being respected.”

(Other town leaders did not respond when asked for comment by the Beacon.)

Although the family-run Billsboro Winery is located in Geneva, owner Aliperti still shares concerns about Seneca Meadows and its impact on fellow wine cultivators. He sees some hope ahead, however, with the announced closure of the Ontario County Landfill in 2028.

“The entire region has been under threat for over the last 20 years by bad actors, so I’m very sensitive to protecting it,” Aliperti says. “We, as business owners, as residents, as an economy, are so reliant on a clean environment and clean water in the Finger Lakes.”

Seneca Lake Guardian, on the other hand, has concentrated its efforts primarily on the DEC and Gov. Kathy Hochul. The group has prepared for a public comment period on the expansion for three years, but Taylor says resubmissions and extensions keep happening instead.

The group contends the Valley Infill Project is yet another example of how the administration is failing the Finger Lakes region. Members most recently protested at Hochul’s State of the State address this month, focusing on issues like the Seneca Meadows landfill expansion, the agreement with Greenidge Generation to continue its bitcoin mining, and a potential nuclear power plant in Schuyler County.

“The people of the Finger Lakes are extremely angry with the governor right now because of (the Greenidge) decision. In fact, people across the state were extremely angry,” Taylor says. “The best thing for her to do in terms of her campaign is to make a decision that protects people of the Finger Lakes and deny this expansion.”

Cosentino believes there must be more action at the state level on both Seneca Fall’s Local Law 3 and the DEC.

“The topic (of Local Law 3) feels out of town’s hands currently as we wait for the state courts to decide its fate along with the DEC, which has made no decision on (Seneca Meadows’) expansion request,” Consentino says. “We deserve answers from the state and it’s about time we get some.”

Concerns over tourism

Waterloo Container’s primary customers are wineries, breweries, cideries, or other liquor manufacturers, making the company feel linked to the Finger Lakes’ reputation for craft industries. That belief in connectivity is shared by Aliperti.

“We really are all connected here on the wine trail, which is expanding to be a beer and cider trail now. Agritourism is the engine of this place, not landfills,” he says. 

According to the Seneca Lake Guardian, the Finger Lakes’ $3 billion agritourism industry is responsible for 60,000 jobs in the area and developments like the Valley Infill Project will harm that economy.

Seneca Meadows points to a 2022 report on Finger Lakes tourism that indicates a post-COVID recovery and outperformance by Seneca County compared to others in the industry, which proves that the landfill does not have an outsized impact on tourism in the area.

Instead, the $75 million in revenue generated for local government through “host community agreements” with Seneca Falls and Waterloo as well as additional money from property taxes are evidence of Seneca Meadows’ integral part of the local economy, the company says.

Pitifer is not convinced, however. He believes that Waste Connections is planning to expand even more, and the project started in 2023 is just the beginning. Seneca Meadows has not announced any plans to expand past the Valley Infill Project.

“We’re not people with a sign saying, ‘Close the landfill!’” he says. “We are a neighbor across the street saying, ‘You agreed to a closure date with the state and the town. You need to stick to that so that businesses like ours don’t continue to suffer for another two decades.’

“When they dangle money and promises in front of residents and in front of the town, my question is, at what cost? I want Seneca Falls to be Bedford Falls, not Pottersville,” Pitifer concludes.

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].