Dueling landfill petitions to put issue before voters

Map of proposed landfill

MILTON - Dueling citizens petitions over a proposed 54-acre landfill on Piggott Hill Road have been submitted to town officials and will likely be on the March ballot.

Two of the petitions seek to prohibit solid waste landfills like the one proposed, while a third seeks to make them legal.

The petitions come in the wake of the proposal by a New York company called RE Energy Holdings LLC, which seeks to buy about 259 acres of land on which the landfill will be created.

An expected Planning Board meeting on Jan. 6 will take up all three petitions.

The pro-landfill petitions would change Milton's zoning laws to allow landfills in all industrial zones.

Selectmen Mike Beaulieu and Andrew Rawson pledged to do what they could to stop the landfill proposal during a heated discussion at a crowded Board of Selectmen meeting held Oct. 10 at Nute High School. Residents there were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal.

Selectmen Chair Tom Gray wasn't at the October meeting, but said on Friday that the voters of Milton would ultimately decide the issue.

RE Energy Holdings recycles construction and demolition material. It owns several recycling centers and many bio-energy companies. The company already owns facilities in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Connecticut.

Traffic consisting of up to 10 48-foot tractor-trailer trucks per hour would bring in the waste from these facilities, entering Milton primarily from Exit 18 on Route 16. If approved, the facility will open in 2016 and operate for 15-20 years before reaching capacity.

The material dumped in Milton would consist of construction and demolition byproduct and "fines" (finely ground by-product) - material that is not allowed in many other landfills, and has even been banned by some states.

The company is offering Milton $500,000 annually in tipping fees, in lieu of taxes.

Some concerned citizens of Milton have formed a group in an effort to get the facts out to the public. Citizens Against Landfills in Milton (CALM) at https://stopmiltonlandfills.com/