COLONIE — Several hundred neighbors of the Rapp Road landfill came last week to hear about the possibility of filing a class action lawsuit against the city of Albany.

Save the Pine Bush, an advocacy group that works to preserve the ecologically rare pitch pine barrens, held a meeting at the Colonie Family Recreation Center where they discussed the city of Albany’s proposed expansion of its landfill and the smell that comes from the dump.

Peter Henner, lawyer to Save the Pine Bush, detailed the legal options available to people who are affected by the landfill. He took questions from residents at the meeting and distributed a questionnaire so that he could get an idea of the likelihood for a successful suit.
"We support the Save the Pine Bush 100 percent," said Frank Leak, the mayor of the village of Colonie, at the start of the meeting. He and village residents are fed up with the smells from the landfill, he said, adding that from the City of Albany, "We keep getting the same old bull-crap: It’s gonna go away."

Over the next couple of weeks, the city anticipates that there will be a noticeable improvement in the smell from the dump, said Bob VanAmburgh, from Mayor Gerald Jennings’s office. The city has contracted with Clough Harbour & Associates, an engineering firm, to deal with the smells, he said, although he didn’t know the details of what will be done to mitigate the smell.
"I’ll believe it when I see it," said Lynn Jackson, of Save the Pine Bush. The city has been saying it will address the problem for years, she said.

The problem with the landfill is that the city has a financial incentive to bring in more garbage since it makes a profit, said Jackson. Ultimately, the goal is to get the city to reduce the amount of garbage going into the landfill and increase the amount of recycling, she said.

The city takes in about $11 million annually from landfill users, which is roughly 7-percent of the city’s budget. The landfill is used by a consortium of municipalities, including the towns of Guilderland, New Scotland, Berne, Knox, Westerlo, Rensselaerville, and the villages of Voorheesville and Altamont, as well as private haulers.
When asked about the profits that the city realizes from the landfill, VanAmburgh first noted that several other municipalities depend on the dump to get rid of their waste, they pay a tipping fee to the city to do so. "Yes, there is money that the city receives," he said. "It is a very, very lucrative money stream."
"The city has to reduce, reuse, and recycle," said Henner during an interview on Tuesday. A lawsuit would show Albany the real cost of the landfill, he said, meaning that the cost includes the effect it has on people’s lives. He hopes a suit might also show the city the error of its ways, he said, adding that the dump isn’t good for the public and it isn’t good for the city’s purse.

The cost of a lawsuit can be steep, said Henry DeCotis, the village of Colonie’s lawyer. Getting the necessary scientific evidence that a person’s damages were caused by something like a landfill is expensive, he said.
"Our strategy has been to be a vociferous opponent in the public hearing process," he said. He also suggested using a political strategy, like writing letters to state representatives to get a bill passed.

When asked about other routes that citizens who oppose the landfill could take, Henner mentioned approaching the state legislature, but said that it is unlikely to be successful. Bringing a lawsuit against the city is a good route, he said. Henner only gets paid if he wins a settlement for his clients, he said, and this case is strong enough to merit his time.

Richard Lippes, a lawyer who has worked with Henner in the past, will be working on this case, too. An authority on citizen suits, Henner said, Lippes’s first big case was in the 1970’s, representing the residents of Love Canal when toxic contamination left by Hooker Chemical was found around their homes in Western New York. The two lawyers have worked on many cases together over the last two decades, Henner said.
Of how long it would take to put together a suit, Henner said, that "depends on factors that I can’t evaluate," including how many people come forward and how similar their complaints are. The latter would determine whether it would be handled as a class-action suit or individually, he said.
Although he hasn’t looked into legal action before, Steve Garry, who lives and works next to the landfill, said that he’d consider being part of a class action. The eight-acre parcel that his family has been on for decades on Lincoln Avenue is split diagonally between the town of Guilderland and the village of Colonie, he said. He lives there and runs a self-storage business that’s only about 80 percent full; most other self-storage businesses in the area maintain 100 percent occupancy, he said. "The only thing I can figure is people don’t want to store their things where it stinks," he said. The affect that the landfill has had on local businesses is one of the things that Henner is trying to gauge before bringing the suit, he said.
"We’re certainly serious about our opposition," said DeCotis when asked if the village of Colonie would consider a lawsuit. "Hiring a law firm is evidence we take it seriously."

The village has hired Young, Sommer, Ward, Ritzenberg, Baker, & Moore LLC, an environmental law firm, DeCotis said.
"We’ll fight, we’ll sue, we’ll do whatever we need to do," said Leak.