Council Agenda Includes Double Dose of Trash Talk

9:15 a.m. UPDATE: Councilor Walter Thibodeau's proposed resolution has been released. It is attached to this article. The proposal states:

The Municipal Council of the City of Attleboro strongly urges MassDEP and EndCap to develop an alternative plan which reduces the amount of fill required to cap the site, thereby minimizing the impact on the residents of Attleboro, Taunton, and Norton, while simultaneously reducing the expense involved in this process.

If a majority of the council approves Thibodeau's motion, the proposed resolution would go to a council committee for further review and later go before the full council for a vote. 

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The Attleboro Landfill capping project was the subject of between Mayor Kevin Dumas and City Councilor Jonathan Weydt last week, and this week two more city officials plan to get involved in the discussion.

There are two "new business" items on the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, one from Councilor Richard Conti and the other from Councilor Walter Thibodeau.

Conti is calling for the creation of a city ordinance requiring a fee of $2.52 per ton of material delivered "for access by truck on public ways to an established, reopened or new landfill." A 2009 agreement signed between the president of EndCap Technology and Mayor Dumas states the company would pay the city 25 cents per ton while it sends an estimated 650,000 tons of "slightly contaminated material" via truck to the Attleboro Landfill during a three- to four-year period as part of the capping project.

Conti told Attleboro Patch that his proposed fee is based on the Massachusetts general law that states the operator of a private landfill "shall" pay the municipality $1 per ton of solid waste processed. The law went into effect in 1981 and states the fee should go up each year based on the Boston Consumer Price Index.

"The $2.52 is an average US CPI and the actual figure will be based on the Boston Consumer Price Index, but it should not be much different," Conti wrote in an email to Patch. "The municipality can charge up to and no more than that amount is my understanding. The whole point is that we have no ordinance for a tipping fee in the books as of now even though it is state law."

Conti's agenda item currently states 25 cents per ton, but he told Patch the figure would change to $2.52 when he introduces the item during the meeting.

Thibodeau's agenda item calls for a "resolution relative to the proposed Attleboro Landfill capping project." He wrote in an email to Patch on Monday that he was working on revising the original draft of his proposed resolution, and would provide a copy of the document to this website prior to the meeting. He did not specify what would be included in the resolution.