Leachate Loophole

Kingston Is Receiving 4 Million Gallons of “Garbage Water” a Year. What Will the State and Our Local Officials Do About It?

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This is the latest in our ongoing series  following efforts to close the Leachate Loophole.

By Rebecca Martin

We’ve written about Kingston’s role in New York’s landfill leachate problem, and the issue has received significant press attention. But people are still learning about what is happening here—and there is an important reason to pay attention right now.

New York State is considering new regulations for landfill leachate, and the public comment period is open through September 9.

Leachate is “garbage water”—the contaminated liquid created when rain moves through buried waste and is collected at the bottom of a landfill. It can contain PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and other pollutants.

According to New York River Watch’s statewide analysis, approximately 4 million gallons of this contaminated garbage water are sent to Kingston’s sewage treatment plant every year. From there, the discharge enters Rondout Creek and ultimately flows into the Hudson River—a drinking-water source for more than 107,000 people downstream.

Kingston has already raised concerns.

In early 2025, the City of Kingston notified the Town of Hurley that it would no longer accept its landfill leachate from the Hurley landfill, a NYS Superfund site*. Following state-required testing, however, Kingston ultimately continued accepting it.

The City was working from a single sample tested for only three contaminants, providing a very limited picture of what may be present in landfill leachate. The state subsequently told the City that the results were below the applicable thresholds for the three contaminants tested and therefore met current standards. It is difficult to understand how “meeting current standards” can be considered an adequate threshold when sewage treatment plants are not monitoring for or designed to remove the full range of toxic chemicals that are present in leachate. Dilution is not the solution to this pollution.

The Proposed Rules Exempt Inactive Landfills—Including Those Sending Leachate to Kingston

There is another serious problem for Kingston. Every landfill currently sending leachate to the City of Kingston’s sewage treatment plant is inactive. Yet the proposed regulations, as currently written, exempt inactive landfills from the new treatment requirements. That means that if the regulations are adopted as written, every landfill currently sending leachate to Kingston could remain exempt from the new source-treatment requirements—allowing this flow of pollution to continue for another generation.

A landfill does not stop producing contaminated leachate simply because it stops accepting garbage. The chemicals and other pollutants remain in the buried waste, and leachate can continue to be generated for decades.

If New York is going to establish new requirements for landfill leachate, those requirements need to apply to active, inactive, and closed landfills.

Now is the time for action.

The state’s proposed regulations present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to require treatment at the source—before landfill leachate leaves a landfill.

As far as we are aware, we have not yet seen public engagement in this rulemaking from Kingston’s elected or appointed officials, Ulster County legislators representing affected communities, or the County Executive’s Office.  If they have submitted comments, taken a position, or otherwise engaged, we would welcome being informed so we can share that information with the community.

There is still time, and participating is easy. The public and officials can submit comments, call for the regulations to apply to inactive landfills, support stronger source-treatment requirements, and ask the state for a transition plan for municipalities like Kingston that currently receive landfill leachate.

Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency Executive Director Marc Rider has signed onto the statewide coalition letter supporting stronger regulations. We appreciate his participation. We hope Kingston and Ulster County officials will use this opportunity as well.

The public comment deadline is September 9. This is an important opportunity for our local leaders to make their positions known—and help ensure that the state’s new regulations actually address the problem.

*  Correction: The Town of Hurley landfill is a state Superfund site, not a federal Superfund site.

If you represent an organization: Sign on to New York River Watch’s public comment letter by September 8 and join the 75+ organizations that have already signed on.

If you are an individual: Visit New York River Watch’s Action page to submit a public comment.

If you would like to submit your own comments directly: Visit the NYSDEC’s public comment page for information on how to participate.

Half a Billion Gallons of “Garbage Water” Going Into Rivers and Lakes That Serve as Drinking Water: A New Statewide Report Has More Than One Kingston Connection

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By Rebecca Martin

A new statewide report from New York River Watch exposes a regulatory loophole that allows toxic leachate from landfills to enter New York’s rivers and lakes.

During the report’s five-year study period, more than half a billion gallons of landfill leachate—highly contaminated “garbage water” created when rain and snowmelt move through buried waste—were sent to municipal sewage treatment plants each year from 2019 through 2023. While the report documents five years of data, this practice has been going on for decades.

The report, The Leachate Loophole in New York State, found that  approximately 167 million gallons were ultimately discharged into rivers and lakes designated as drinking-water sources—about one-third of the statewide total.

The Hudson River was among the four waterbodies receiving the largest volumes, along with the Mohawk River, Lake Ontario, and Niagara River.

The City of Kingston Is Part of the Statewide Problem

This statewide report reveals that the problem is happening right here in Kingston, where garbage water is being sent to our municipal sewage treatment plant, discharged into Rondout Creek, and carried directly into the Hudson River.

Landfill leachate can contain PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, and other industrial pollutants. Yet instead of being treated at the landfill, it is often trucked or piped to municipal sewage treatment plants designed primarily for domestic sewage.

The scale of the problem goes far beyond any single contaminant. EPA lists 86,000 unique chemicals that are used in manufacturing or processing in the U.S., not including chemicals used in foods, drugs, and cosmetics, with more added everyday.  Many of these chemicals ultimately become part of the products we use, the waste we throw away, and potentially the leachate produced when that waste is buried. We cannot know what we are not looking for.

That makes focusing on any one contaminant an unrealistic way to address treatment of garbage water.  However, if PFAS is the “poster child” chemical of concern today, here is a sobering truth: chemical companies can create and introduce synthetic chemicals faster than we can understand them, regulate them, or protect ourselves from their consequences—because in the United States, the burden of proof falls on the public to demonstrate harm after exposure, rather than on manufacturers to prove safety before these chemicals enter our products, communities, and environment.  The number of known PFAS chemicals has grown from approximately 14,000 to more than 21,000.

Twenty-one thousand.

And that number will continue to grow because manufacturers can continue introducing new chemicals without first having to demonstrate that they are safe. Even more concerning, some PFAS treatment methods can create new PFAS compounds that we don’t even know exist. We are trying to manage a problem involving more than 21,000 known PFAS chemicals, while New York’s enforceable drinking-water standards currently address just two: PFOA and PFOS.

Two.

That is one reason we should not be sending landfill leachate containing potentially thousands of synthetic chemicals into sewage treatment plants and relying on those facilities to protect our rivers and lakes that serve as drinking-water supplies to more than 2-million people statewide. 

In the case of the Hudson River, according to the report, 73.4 million gallons of leachate entered the Hudson  between 2019 and 2023, including approximately 5 million gallons discharged near Hudson 7 drinking-water intakes.   Nearly 4 million gallons of that passed through the City of Kingston Sewage Treatment Plant, which accepts leachate from the Town of Hurley, Jockey Hill, the Town of Ulster, and the Town of New Paltz.

“The findings in this report raise significant concerns for the more than 107,000 residents who rely on the Hudson River as their primary source of drinking water,” said Rhinebeck Mayor Gary Bassett, Chair of the Hudson River Drinking Water Intermunicipal Council (Hudson 7). “Protecting drinking water requires a proactive approach that prevents pollution from reaching the river in the first place, rather than relying solely on treatment after it enters the drinking water supply.”

New York State has proposed new regulations for the onsite treatment and disposal of leachate at landfills with a  public comment deadline of September 9.  We encourage Kingston community members to take action.  Although these regulations are critically important—developing new requirements and treatment capacity will take time.

We cannot wait years to address a problem we know is happening today. Kingston should stop accepting raw, toxic garbage water at its sewage treatment plant now.

But Kingston cannot solve this problem alone. Our state representatives and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation—whose permitting framework has allowed these loopholes and gaps to persist—must step in immediately to help Kingston and affected landfills find a safe short-term solution.

 

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Read the Report and View the Interactive Map
www.leachateloophole.org

Take Action
https://leachateloophole.org/take-action/
New York has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get this right. DEC must bring together the best scientific, engineering, and public health expertise to create a plan that truly protects our water, communities, and environment. The state must not create a system that shifts the costs and consequences of toxic pollution onto communities, and the landfills that profit from managing this waste must be held accountable. Public comment is open through September 9.

Attend Public Webinars to learn about the report and answer questions
https://leachateloophole.org/webinars/
Join us for public webinars on Thursday, August 13 at noon and 6pm, to learn about the report’s findings, the implications for New York’s drinking water and environment, and what can be done to close the leachate loophole in New York State.