Casperkill Watershed Oral History Project

At one time, the 36 acre property located at 275 Van Wagner Road was the final resting place for around 90% of the industrial and commercial waste generated by the city and town of Poughkeepsie.  The history of the site is marked by repeated violations of health and environmental codes.

A current aerial image of the landfill is shown above.  1936 aerial photographs suggest that dumping at the FICA landfill filled in a wetland and displaced the Casperkill by about 20 meters.

Prior to 1976, the Dutchess County Airport served as the primary dump site for Poughkeepsie, Wappingers and LaGrange.  Poughkeepsie was forced to stop baling garbage at this location when  improperly handled garbage began to attract too many birds, making it unsafe for pilots to land and take off at the airport.  The Federal Aviation Administration gave Dutchess County until April of 1976 to stop baling garbage at the Airport, and under the pressure of this deadline Poughkeepsie officials began to consider other options including: 1) reopening a former landfill on 67 acres of the Van De Water property located off the Dutchess Turnpike, and 2) contracting with Dutchess Sanitation, Inc., which had a large facility in Ulster County, and a smaller, non-dumping, compaction-only site along Van Wagner Road.  Ultimately, officials opted for option 2.  Though they wanted to re-open the Van de Water property, they could not afford to pay a $500 a day fine for operating a town landfill without prior approval from the county Health Department.  The city entered into a 19-day agreement with Dutchess Sanitation to buy time to figure out a more permanent solution.

The arrangement with Dutchess Sanitation was controversial from the very beginning.  The town of Poughkeepsie soon filed a suit against the firm in the State Supreme Court regarding 6 zoning violations and misuse of a building permit application.  Additionally, many residents in Ulster County protested the use of the Dutchess Sanitation-owned landfill near Plattekill.  In May of 1977, Ulster County officials voted to ban outside garbage from coming into the town for baling.  The lawsuit in Poughkeepsie and the ban in Ulster County both put significant financial hardship on Dutchess Sanitation.  The head of the firm Joseph Fiorillo—popularly referred to by locals as “Joe Garbage”—began baling and burying waste at the site along Van Wagner Road.  Fiorillo obtained a temporary landfill-operating permit from the Town of Poughkeepsie to bury demolition waste and ‘miscellaneous debris” from commercial consumers.  He did not need the approval of the Health Department for this permit because he was not (supposed to be) burying any organic garbage or old appliances.  When a sanitarian inspecting the site found that Fiorillo was, in fact,  illegally taking in old appliances, or “white waste,” officials were immediately concerned about the potential pollution of nearby groundwater wells.  The town moved to seek a permanent injunction against this violation of zoning ordinances and health codes, but a Supreme Court justice in Poughkeepsie refused to grant it.  The justice claimed that Fiorillo had no-where else to dump the garbage, and went as far as to say that by taking in the garbage, Fiorillo was actually “performing a service to the community.”

Information from: Metal Contamination and Distribution in Casper Creek Poughkeepsie, New York.  Chromium Concentrations Near the FICA Landfill. Elizabeth L. Belk, Dept. of Geology, Vassar College, 1995.