A seven-year dispute over a proposed trash-handling facility in New Bedford heads to court today.
Neighbors have objected to the plan by South Coast Renewables, a subsidiary of Parallel Products, to accept up to 1,500 tons of trash a day for transfer to disposal facilities elsewhere.
They have cited concerns about rats, litter, traffic, noise, odor, and environmental contamination. A fire at a different waste-transfer station in the city last year sent rats running into the adjacent neighborhood.
The New Bedford Board of Health denied the project 2-1 last September, and now the company is appealing in Suffolk Superior Court.
The nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation is involved in the case, representing a group of neighbors with legal standing, as an intervenor defendant, to help defend the Board of Health decision.
Foundation staff attorney Jillian Aicher said the trash facility would be 600 feet away from the closest home.
“It is very close to residential facilities,” she said. “And it's also only half a mile away from the Acushnet Cedar Swamp, which is a protected, ecologically significant natural area.”
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, who once said the project would pose health risks, later signed an agreement with the company.
“I totally get the concerns, and what we've tried to do is make the best deal possible under existing law,” he said. “Existing law is really, in our view — and based on … the advice of counsel we received — stacked against the city. And so, you know, what we tried to do is, is hedge our bet.”
He said the city worried that if it objected to South Coast Renewables, the project might move forward in spite of those objections, and leave the city without benefits from a written agreement. Instead, Mitchell agreed not to advocate against the facility in exchange for fees paid to the city and limits on what can be done on the site.
Aicher said the agreement is lacking.
“The mitigation measures you reference are hypothetical and grossly insufficient, which is made clear in the Board of Health's decision,” she said.
The New Bedford Health Department did not return a call seeking comment.
South Coast Renewables already operates a recycling facility at the proposed location at 100 Duchaine Blvd. It processes expired beverages and about half of the deposit bottles in Massachusetts, according to Tim Cusson, vice president of business development.
Asked how the trash operation would control liquid runoff, he said the trash would not be exposed to rain and would produce very little liquid.
“Our operations are all done inside, in controlled environments, on a controlled concrete slab,” he said. “So any runoff is caught in our catchment system and it's tight-tanked, and then it's actually trucked offsite.”
He said any risks to the community have been eliminated.
The proposed facility would be located on the east side of the 1,000-acre New Bedford Business Park, in the city’s Far North End.
