Receivers have been known to parachute into Bay State municipalities to clean up their finances, but never to clean up their landfills. That all changed when attorney Michael Leon was appointed receiver to help Middleton deal with a decades-old environmental nightmare. How the receiver handled the case, along with the push to confront problems with old landfills elsewhere, helped revolutionize solid waste management in the Bay State.
Decades ago, Massachusetts had hundreds of old landfills, but Middleton’s problem was among the worst. Town officials had been trying since the 1970s to convince a local farmer and his family to clean up their 35-acre property. Alongside raising farm animals and corn, beans, and other crops, members of the Rubchinuk family operated a sanitary landfill.
Over the years, however, a section of the property in a wetland area morphed into an illegal waste dump, pockmarked by boats, autos, railroad cars, tires, chunks of buildings, and other construction debris (along with some hazardous waste). Neighbors complained about odors and other problems.
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The landfill site before the cleanup. |
The Rubchinuks evaded the state’s early solid waste regulations by calling the 17-acre site a “farm elevation project,” meaning they wanted to raise the farm above the flood plain. Although the owner, Peter Rubchinuk, eventually got partial approval for a landfill, he regularly violated the terms.
It was a “horrendous situation,” according to Steve Lipman, a former Department of Environmental Protection official. “[The property] was actually like going back to the middle of Arkansas in the 1800s,” said Lipman, who is retired and now works part-time for the agency. “It was a bizarre place.”
The conflict came to a head in 1975 when an underground fire that had burned off and on for weeks required an assist from the Army Corps of Engineers to put out. The state sued Peter Rubchinuk a year later.
But the case ping-ponged around the attorney general’s office and the courts for another 13 years. Despite his legal quagmire, Rubchinuk refused to budge. When Leon came on the case, his job was to cap and close the site.
Given his experience in environmental and land use law, Leon, of Nutter McClennen and Fish, thought that he could swoop in, seize assets to clean up the site, and move on. But it wasn’t that simple.
“His attitude was basically, ‘It was my land, I’m not doing anything wrong,’ nobody was going to tell him what to do,” says Leon of Rubchinuk.
Leon discovered that the “business” earned nearly $2 million and perhaps more. But the family had spent everything. The local police department warned him about death threats.
Finally found in contempt of court, Rubchinuk went to jail briefly in the mid-1990s. Thinking that the farmer would be more valuable to the cleanup effort on the outside, Leon bailed him out. The gamble didn’t pay off. Rubchinuk still refused to cooperate. He later fled to New Hampshire, according to Leon.
The cleanup began in the late 1990s. Today, with the proper permitting, a landfill can be cleaned up and capped in a spring-to-fall construction season. But Leon had no assets to get started. The receiver started out by selling buildable lots to a developer, which brought in $100,000, only a fraction of the millions he needed.
To generate money, Leon accepted urban fill from construction projects involving the Big Dig, the MBTA Silver Line, and Logan International Airport. The fill was used to bury some debris and grade the site. Cars, boats, and the like were trucked out. Leon raised $7 million and spent $6 million by the time he finished the project in 2001.
Town officials and neighborhood residents were skeptical that Leon could follow through. “They were very nervous and apprehensive,” said Ira Singer, the town administrator whose 30-year career has spanned the landfill case.
Leon allayed their fears by having an on-site manager handle concerns about truck traffic, noise, cleaning, and other issues. He also built a soccer field that town teams could use free of charge. There are now trails and multi-million dollar homes on the former landfill.
After convincing Middleton officials that the capped landfill was safe, Leon transferred title of the land to the town in 2009, 20 years after he started his work. The town also received more than $360,000 of the leftover funds to put toward future maintenance. Town officials later used the money to build two new playing fields.
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Playing fields were built 200-400 feet from the landfill site. |
Leon isn’t troubled by the town’s decision to use some of the money for playing fields, although he notes that the town will eventually have to allocate money for upkeep of the site. “The neighborhood did very well,” said Leon. “I am sure none of them know that this was a big farm and illegal dump.”
The remaining $747,000 was set aside for a one-time state grant program that will allow communities in Essex County that have suffered from illegal dumping to apply for grants to create or clean up small parks or urban gardens. None of the initial grant applicants were approved, so the Department of Environmental Protection is recasting the program and seeking public input on how to attract more applicants.
Massachusetts has some of the strictest solid waste regulations in the country now, according to Jamie Doucette, the DEP’s deputy director for business compliance.
There are only 24 active landfills left and operators must have the funds to pay for closing a site from day one. Most importantly, the cars and boats and other types of construction waste that littered the Rubchinuk property don’t go into landfills. Most solid waste gets recycled, burned, and converted to electricity or steam power or shipped out-of-state for processing.
But landfill controversies continue to play out. In December, the attorney general’s office submitted a final closure plan for a Newburyport landfill after more than a decade of complaints by abutters.
Towns need to be proactive to get environment laws enforced, says Singer. “Lobby very strongly for [DEP] to remain involved,” says Singer. “And, if necessary, follow our path in asking the [attorney general] to go to Superior Court on behalf of the DEP and appoint a receiver, if it comes to that.”