County legislators finally signed off on a new contract with the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency on Oct. 21, with both sides able to claim a relative victory.
While the agency saw its bonding cap raised from $500,000 to $60 million, the legislature instituted guardrails on what shape the future of waste diversion will take in the county. Biogas and anaerobic digestion are still on the table; incinerators and waste-to-energy facilities are out.
When the agency first signed a contract with the county in 1988, a $40 million bonding cap was instituted. In the intervening years, the bonding cap—an amount the agency can bond that requires sign-off from the county legislature—was reduced to $500,000.
Executive Director Marc Rider is pleased with the outcome.
“All of the projects that we want to pursue related to diversion can be accomplished with that $60 million over the next five years,” he said.
While contract negotiations bogged down in the Energy, Environment and Sustainability Committee for five months, strictly speaking, the agency doesn’t require a contract with the county. But it has its advantages.
As a way to raise revenues beyond the performance of its regular operations, the agency issues revenue bonds, for which repayment is based on the revenue streams generated by the agency. If revenues fall, the contract grants the agency the right to collect a net service fee from the county. However unlikely, the contract also extends this right to bondholders, legally putting taxpayers on the hook for repayment of revenue bonds if the agency becomes insolvent.
Financial reports for 2024 showed a net position of $14.9 million, and the agency retired all remaining debt obligations in March with a final payment of $4.05 million.
“The net service fee is like an insurance policy,” Rider said. “If something catastrophic were to happen and either we weren’t receiving any revenue or expenses greatly exceeded our revenue, it makes our finance and administrative people feel more comfortable to have the possibility. But we haven’t used it for 13-plus years.”
The agency primarily generates revenues through municipal solid waste tipping fees—more than $16 million raised in 2024—though fuel surcharges and sales of recyclables represent the second- and third-most lucrative revenue generators: $1.1 million and just over $700,000, respectively.
In fourth place in terms of revenue is the agency’s composting operation, for which tipping fees and sales totaled $270,000 in 2024. The agency completed its second season of bagged compost sales, selling more than 2,000 one-cubic-foot bags in 2024 at $5 per bag—a 76 percent increase over the prior year.
With the City of Kingston’s announcement that it will begin curbside collection of organic waste in April 2026—think Berlin, think Montreal—revenues from the composting operation are expected to increase significantly.
Previously permitted to accept up to 5,000 tons of food waste annually, in 2023 the agency submitted a permit modification to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to increase the tonnage it could accept. In August, the DEC signed off.
“From 5,000 tons, we can now receive up to 7,500 tons,” Rider said. “So that goes well with the rollout of the city program.”
As organic waste makes up approximately 22 percent of the waste stream, its collection for composting diverts it from the stream of trucks destined to haul the county’s garbage to the landfill.
No dump in my backyard
The largest drag on the fiscal health of the agency has been the decades-long inability of the residents of these 23 municipalities to site a landfill anywhere in the county. As a result, anything that can’t be diverted from the waste stream is hauled 250 miles to Seneca Meadows, New York state’s largest landfill, at a cost that grows larger every year—$13 million in 2024.
Attempts in recent years to develop additional landfill capacity have resulted in acrimony and outrage, followed by resolutions in the legislature to ban those sites from consideration. Proposed sites never included northern municipalities like Phoenicia, Rosendale or Woodstock.
Bowing to the tireless refrain of NIMBYism, Rider—supported by the agency’s board—announced earlier this year that no further efforts to site a landfill would be undertaken in Ulster County, at least in the short term. Instead, the agency will focus on its diversion mission.
An RFP released in April produced a pool of candidates proposing alternatives to landfilling and incineration: biogasification, plasma arc gasification, anaerobic digestion, hydrolysis, pyrolysis and even mechanical separation of waste, also known as a dirty MRF.
“We’ve gone through multiple rounds with some proposers, and the evaluation committee is going to get it down to three companies,” Rider said. “It’s all pretty sophisticated stuff, but the goal is to divert somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the waste from all of Ulster County.”
Rider anticipates being able to announce the selection of a company around January. That’s when the $60 million bonding cap will come into play to underwrite design, permitting, construction and operation costs for the kind of facility needed to get a firmer grip on Ulster County’s 140,000-ton waste problem.
The agency’s contract expires May 31, 2030.
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