It's enough to make you go crazy

Here's the report in today's Daily News about the landfill smell spread from yesterday.

Heh, the mayor is still not convinced the "burnt" odor is coming from the landfill.

I talked with Dick Chalpin of the DEP after the meeting on Tuesday evening (actually, he approached me and asked me if I was Gillian and told me he reads the blog), and I asked him about the possibility of the landfill burning.

They had already sort of addressed that during the meeting, when Ron K. stood up and said "a local writer" had suggested the landfill might be burning.

The DEP did not totally rule it out, although Chalpin said there most likely would be smoke. But DEP Commissioner Laurie Burt said during the meeting to Ron that, "we are trying to get to the bottom of that."

John Carrigan, head guy of this region for DEP, said that there was no evidence of spontaneous combustion (I guess a smell isn't evidence) and that the conditions at the landfill are inconsistent with combustion.

But then - if there's smell, I suppose logic says there should be smoke.

I checked on the Everett board but I don't see any mention of a fire at the Wood Waste facility in Everett. Someone had said that they had heard that New Ventures was bringing in charred material from a fire there.

I don't know - I recall smelling that "burnt" smell months ago, in the winter, when I was at Port Plaza (north of the landfill) and more recently, at Dunkin' Donuts on the traffic circle (south of the landfill).

And by the way - the DEP commissioner said that the DEP has never put the 21E 'blight' on the city but rather it is on New Ventures. It has always been New Ventures - and the mayor - who has made it seem as if the responsibility is on the city to clean up any potential hazardous waste.

Another misdirection, another concession to the landfill owner. Pfffft, I say, pffffft.

I did not write a story on the landfill for this week's Current because the editor, Barbara Taormina, wrote one. But I'm doing one today on Examiner.com.