The town landfill in Salisbury has finally been capped, marking the end of unlined landfills in Vermont. To protect the environment, Vermonters over the past few decades have been closing their old-fashioned town dumps and sending their trash to lined landfills. After Bristol closed its town dump in 2015, Salisbury’s was the only one left.
After two or three years of lobbying to follow suit, Salisbury residents voted to close and cap their town landfill at town meeting last year. The “town dump” on Upper Plains Road stopped taking trash this past Sept. 1 and town officials set up a mini transfer station there. Residents are able to bring their trash and recyclables there for transport to the Addison County Solid Waste Management facility in Middlebury.
“Everybody loved that dump. It was a social gathering place,” said Pedie O’Brien, a member of the Salisbury selectboard. “Everyone saw their neighbors and friends — it was not an easy task to get people to understand why we wanted it closed.”
Since last September Casella Construction has been covering and closing the old dump; it completed the job June 5. The company used the refuse of Omya’s calcium carbonate mining and processing along with a mixture of compost from Green Mountain Compost to cap the big hill of waste, and topped it by hydroseeding it with a conservation seed mix. “Casella did a wonderful job closing it,” O’Brien said. “We were over there that day and when you looked at it from where we were standing it looked like a big white half-moon.” Selectboard Chair Paul Vaczy shared the selectboard’s appreciation for the work done by Jeff Chase and Charles Wadleigh, along with everyone else from Casella Construction. “They jumped right in and did a beautiful job,” Vaczy said.
R&L Rubbish manages the transfer station at the landfill. O’Brien noted that things such as metal, electronics, compost and light brush can still be dropped off at the transfer station. “We tried to keep as much as we could from when it was a landfill,” she said.
The Salisbury transfer station also has the shed where one could drop off or pick up used items. “We have updated our policy and ask that people pay $1 for whatever you bring in,” O’Brien said. “This is because the shed will eventually be sorted through and (old or unwanted items will be) brought to Middlebury, which will cost money.”