Murree Administration Prepares for Summer Tourist Season

Small town, big landfill: New York’s largest garbage dump could grow larger

Trashed: The Secret Life of Plastic Recycling

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More than 200 miles away from the Kingston, New York, Target store's plastic bag recycling bin lies Seneca Meadows, a landfill that does not recycle plastic bags.

Yet the facility in Seneca County, which is New York's largest garbage dump, was the last place where a plastic bag tracker placed by ABC News inside the recycling bin at the Kingston Target ended up pinging.

It was just one of 46 trackers dropped off by ABC News and collaborating ABC stations at retail stores nationwide as part of an investigation called, "Trashed: The Secret Life of Plastic Recycling."

"We've suspected for quite a while that our recycling programs don't work as they're supposed to," said Rich Swinehart, CEO of Waterloo Container, a business near Seneca Meadows. "We've suspected that a lot of recyclables end up in the landfill, and that's exactly the root of the problem."

Half of the trackers last pinged from incinerators or landfills, many of which are located in rural areas like Seneca County. Some local residents have voiced concerns about living near Seneca Meadows, citing periodic odors, truck traffic, and fears of health risks.

In a statement to ABC News, Target said that last year, the company recycled nearly 24 million pounds worth of plastic bags and plastic film materials.

"We take seriously the role we play in reducing waste and we're committed to looking at our processes to improve our recycling efforts," the statement said in part.

"I understand the position that the world needs a place to dispose of their waste," said resident Bill Lutz. "The problem is the waste is concentrated in such large amounts in such a small community."

Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator, said another concern associated with landfills can be the release of methane gas from rotting garbage and its contribution to climate change.

"Landfills and incinerators are not good neighbors," Enck added. "They are making the local environment more polluted than it should be."

Just like ABC's plastic bag tracker, many items at Seneca Meadows come from places located a distance away, according to filings posted by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The landfill's 2020 annual report shows that less than 1% of the waste that it received that year came from Seneca County, while 6.59% came from Ulster County, home to the Kingston Target.

"We don't know what's in the air. We don't know what's in the water. We don't know what's coming from the landfill," Swinehart said. "It's the not knowing that makes you lose sleep at night."

Lutz's wife Annette, who was a member of the Seneca Falls Town board, died in 2019. Prior to her death, Annette Lutz helped pass a local law that would make Seneca Meadows close in 2025.

However, landfill owner Waste Connections has challenged that law, filing a request for an expansion that would allow for more garbage to be brought in instead.

Kyle Black of Waste Connections said the landfill is a valued part of the community, adding that, "a small group of vocal opponents" are making "baseless claims."

"Many experts agree that closing Seneca Meadows would not reduce the waste produced in New York State. Instead, it would directly lead to more pollution," Black told ABC News, citing increased traffic of trucks moving waste further away.

"That waste would likely be trucked to neighboring states with less stringent waste management regulations, to facilities with inferior infrastructure and staff that haven’t been trained to our industry leading standards," Black added.

"As long as Seneca Meadows is operational, we will always be there for our neighbors—from investing in new, green technologies to supporting worthy charities, and creating and retaining good paying jobs."

To Bill Lutz, the last thing that his community needs is more garbage.

"We've done our part," he said. "It's time for it to move on someplace else."

HK to ban seafood from high-risk regions near Fukushima if Japan dumps nuclear-contaminated water into ocean

At the seafood shelf in a supermarket located in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, where Jobanmono (seafood from Fukushima and Ibaraki) is displayed, the labels on the seafood products indicate that they are sourced from other countries or regions, including Russia and the US. Photo: Xu Keyue/GT

Hong Kong will ban seafood from high-risk regions near Fukushima at once if Japan starts to dump nuclear-contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, said Hong Kong's environment chief on Thursday.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has set up a special group to guarantee food security for residents, said Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan, emphasizing that if Japan starts dumping the nuclear-contaminated wastewater, the government will take immediate measures to ban the import of aquatic products from high-risk regions along the Fukushima coast and to impose strict import controls on aquatic products from other risk regions in Japan.

The specific contents of the import controls, including the affected regions in Japan, will depend on the final conclusions of the International Atomic Energy Agency's overall report, expert opinions, relevant information provided by the Japanese side, and risk exams, Hong Kong's Environment and Ecology Bureau told the Global Times.

Japan on Monday started to send seawater into an underwater tunnel of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant designed to release nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, which is seen as preparation for the formal dumping plan to discharge more than 1 million tons of nuclear-contaminated wastewater starting from the spring or summer in 2023.

The food security center has enhanced radiation testing of imported Japanese food, especially seafood, since mid-April, and the government will strengthen radiation inspections of imported Japanese food, releasing monitoring data on specific radionuclide measurements every month, said Tse Chin-wan, warning food importers and the catering industry to make early arrangements.

The Environment and Ecology Bureau told the Global Times that from March 2011 to May 2023, the Center for Food Safety tested more than 770,000 samples of imported food from Japan, including 120,000 samples of aquatic products. The radiation levels in all samples did not exceed the reference limits set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, an international food standards organization.

Currently, live, frozen or chilled seafood, as well as chilled meat, poultry and eggs from Fukushima and four neighboring prefectures of Ibaraki, Tochigi, Chiba and Gunma can still enter Hong Kong as long as the items have radiation certificates issued by the Japanese authorities.

After the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast in March 2011, triggering a tsunami that resulted in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, there were 12 countries and regions that imposed food import bans on Japan, including Hong Kong.

The city banned vegetables, fruits, milk, dairy beverages and powdered milk from Fukushima, and it required radiation certificates and exporter certificates for food products from the neighboring prefectures.

As Japan is a popular travel destination with its food highly regarded by people in Hong Kong, Elizabeth Quat, a Hong Kong lawmaker, told the Global Times on Thursday that she sent a letter to the Legislative Council's Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene on Wednesday, requiring the authorities to strengthen testing and consider banning seafood from the surrounding areas of Fukushima to ensure the health of Hong Kong residents.

"The Japanese government claims that the contaminated water has been 'treated' and is now safe, but the statement has been questioned and challenged by the international community on multiple occasions," said Elizabeth Quat. 

Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Monday that the radioactive elements in marine fish caught in the harbor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant far exceeded safety levels for human consumption, with the content of Cs-137 reaching 180 times that of the standard maximum stipulated in Japan's food safety law.

Wong Kit-lung, chairman of the Hong Kong Japanese Food & Cuisine Association, said that as the dumping of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water will have an impact on some supermarkets and seafood businesses in Hong Kong, and some businesses have already made preparations, including shortening product contract periods, reducing the sale of related products, or choosing alternative products from Japan's unaffected prefectures.

The import ban is a feasible countermeasure against Japan's dumping of nuclear contaminated water into the ocean, and the Chinese mainland could impose the import ban to other agricultural and food products from the high-risk areas near Fukushima, Chang Yen-chiang, director of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea Research Institute of Dalian Maritime University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

In 2017, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine mandated that importing enterprises, including cross-border e-commerce, should avoid importing food products from 10 Japanese prefectures. 

These prefectures were Fukushima, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, Saitama, Tokyo and Chiba.