The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA) board of directors approved the agency’s tentative 2025 budget late last month, allocating $895,000 to offset rising costs, which would have seen tipping fees increase from $115 to $140. Under the tentative plan, tipping fees will rise to $135 per ton.
According to UCRRA executive director Marc Rider, the 17 percent tipping-fee increase is due to much higher operating expenses.
The overall costs to transport and dispose of waste rose from $10.68 million to $13.76 million between 2024 and 2025, and overall expenses increased from $17.57 million to nearly $22 million in the same period.
Some of those increases were the result of a jump in general liability insurance after a recently settled claim, plus rising health-insurance rates, salary increases following collective bargaining agreements, and additional staff hires. The agency has no plans to hire additional staff in 2025, Rider said.
Adding a second landfill
When he came on board with the UCRRA in March of this year, Rider said he knew that landfill capacity would be an issue.
“The agency knew that our disposals fees would go up due to lack of capacity in New York State,” Rider said in a late-August press release. “A new landfill has not been permitted in over 20 years, and the number of landfills that have the capacity to accept our waste has diminished.”
The increases in disposal costs were much higher than predicted.
“Agency staff had been putting together projections that were in the 30 percent range, so when we opened the proposals and saw increases of 60 percent in one year, we began drafting budgets that gave the board three options,” Rider said. “The board chose the option that will help mitigate
costs to the working families in Ulster County while still allocating funds to allow us to expand and improve our operations in the future.”
In an interview last week, Rider said the UCRRA had to go out to bid on disposal and transportation contracts for the first time since the global pandemic in 2020, which led them to add a second landfill, Green Ridge RDF, a Waste Management-operated recycling and disposal facility in Gansevoort.
While the cost of disposal at Green Ridge is $72 per ton at its Saratoga County location, the per-ton cost of disposal at Seneca Meadows in Waterloo will rise from $29 to $49 in 2025. While that’s still significantly less than Green Ridge’s cost, Rider said the difference will be offset by what the UCRRA will save on transportation costs. “As opposed to trucking our waste 250 miles each way [to Seneca Meadows], we’ll be trucking it just over 100 miles [to Green Ridge] each way.”
Planning for the future
While the UCRRA is still considering creating an in-county landfill at one of two sites in Wawarsing, it is also evaluating alternative technologies. “At some point in the future, we’ll put out an RFP to see what’s out there,” Rider said. “That’s like biogasification and other technologies other than incineration and landfilling.”
Biogasification, or biomethanization, is the process of converting organic matter into a combination of methane and carbon dioxide, or biogas, which can then be used as a fuel.
While revenues are expected to rise from $20 million in 2024 to $23.57 million in 2025, the UCRRA’s tentative 2025 spending plan does not increase costs for municipalities for waste-container rental or hauling charges. Instead, revenues are likely to be found in an increased demand for compost and an increase in the price paid for the sale of recyclables.
The UCRRA board of directors anticipates the allocation of $895,000 from the agency’s capital reserve fund will help offset expenses associated with modernizing facilities, and may also be used to assist local towns in improving their transfer stations. Funds may also be used to begin looking into the feasibility of recommendations made by the UCRRA reform committee, which released a report in July, which recommended organics diversion, diverting as many materials out of a landfill as possible, and enforcement of existing laws.
A public hearing on the tentative budget for 2025 is scheduled for Thursday, September 26 at 6 p.m. at the UCRRA Administrative office at 999 Flatbush Road in Kingston.
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