Buffalo News: “As feds roll back PFAS regulations, New York needs to step up”

We’re pleased to share an op-ed published in today’s Buffalo News, co-authored with one of our key coalition partners, Yvonne Taylor of Seneca Lake Guardian.  Special thanks to Meg Fitzgerald of BerlinRosen for her support and assistance.

 

ANOTHER VOICE | PUBLIC HEALTH
Another Voice: As feds roll back PFAS regulations, New York needs
to step up

Yvonne Taylor, Rebecca Martin and Jen Epstein

Jun 19, 2025

The Trump administration’s latest rollback of regulations on PFAS – “forever
chemicals” linked to cancer, immune system damage, developmental issues,
and more – is especially dangerous. These compounds never break down in the
environment, and they’re turning up in drinking water supplies across the country,
including here in New York. Landfills are a major contributor of PFAS. When
rainwater and runoff filters through mountains of waste at landfills, it produces
leachate, a toxic cocktail of dozens of chemicals, including PFAS.

Seneca Meadows Inc. (SMI), the state’s largest landfill, produces 200,000 gallons of
this poison every day. SMI trucks most of its leachate to wastewater treatment plants
across New York and even out of state. The Bird Island treatment facility just north of
Buffalo accepted over 32 million gallons of this leachate in 2023 alone. These
facilities are not equipped to remove PFAS and other synthetic chemicals from all the
leachate they accept. They discharge it right back into our rivers, lakes, and
groundwater – untreated.

A recent report found that about 89 million gallons of landfill leachate were
discharged into the Mohawk River and Hudson River Estuary annually from 2019 to
2023. We’re poisoning our drinking water with our own garbage.
The volume of leachate coming from Seneca Meadows could grow. The landfill is
planned to reach capacity and close at the end of this year, but Waste Connections is
applying for a new permit . The decision to shut down the landfill once and for all
remains with the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Seneca Meadows is the poster child of the harmful throwaway culture that New York
should be fighting to move beyond, not grow. New York needs to treat landfill
leachate as the serious threat to human and environmental health that it is.

It’s time to ban the discharge of landfill leachate into municipal wastewater systems,
require landfills to treat leachate for the full range of contaminants , and set legally
enforceable drinking water standards .

As Washington fails us, Albany must rise to the moment.

Yvonne Taylor is a co-founder and vice president, Seneca Lake Guardian; Rebecca
Martin is a project manager and Jen Epstein is a data analyst and lead writer for
the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers Leachate Collaborative