Tonight at 7 at the Presbyterian Church on Pioneer Street in Cooperstown, the League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area will present a forum on the future of MOSA.
Otsego County's solid-waste Director Terry Bliss and the county's three MOSA board members _ Martha Clarvoe of Hartwick, David Parker of Worcester and Edward Wesnofske of Oneonta _ have been asked to attend to answer questions.
Otsego County Rep. Sam Dubben, R-Middlefield, chairman of the county's Solid Waste and Environmental Concerns Committee, has been asked to moderate the meeting.
``I'm glad the League is having this meeting because there are changes coming that people should know about,'' he said Tuesday.
Dubben said the Montgomery-Otsego-Schoharie Solid Waste Management Authority is evolving, clarifying its members' long-term obligations, rearranging its finances and perhaps getting ready for reform.
Established in the late 1980s at the urging to state Department of Environmental Conservation, MOSA is charged with disposing of solid waste generated by its three member counties.
At the start, MOSA had its own landfills in Montgomery County, and waste from all three counties was put into these facilities. MOSA also deposited waste in a smaller landfill in Fly Creek in Otsego County.
Now, as the 25-year contract _ or service agreement _ that binds MOSA together approaches its 2014 expiration date, those landfills are closed. However, they must be monitored continually, and occasionally are found to be leaking, Dubben said.
``When they find leachate, they have to make sure it is disposed of properly,'' he said.
MOSA takes care of this problem now, but after May 2014, should the three counties not renew their contracts, the DEC would want to apportion the cost of monitoring, and perhaps repairing, these landfills among the member counties.
``Right now, we have a tentative post-closure agreement with the three counties, and we've been working to refine that with Hans Arnold,'' Dubben said. Arnold is a solid-waste consultant who has been retained by the three counties.
The tentative agreement calls for Otsego County to pay for 40 percent of the cost of post-closure activities; Montgomery County, 42 percent; and Schoharie County, 18 percent, he said. The numbers reflect the approximate shares of solid waste generated by the counties.
After the post-closure agreement is finalized, the member counties and MOSA's board of directors will work on defeasing _ or guaranteeing _ MOSA's bonds.
Dubben said all three counties are in favor of this step, which will require MOSA to deposit money from its reserves in a special account to make sure its debts are paid off.
``Essentially, we put the money in a locked box and that guarantees the bonds will be paid,'' he said.
If defeasement goes forward as planned, MOSA will then be in a position to decrease its tipping fee, perhaps by $20 per ton, from the $106 per ton charged now.
The next phase in MOSA's evolution may be more difficult to achieve.
In September, Arnold outlined a plan that would have Otsego County leave MOSA and begin to handle its own solid waste by the end of next year. The county would finance this endeavor with its $28-per-household solid-waste user fee.
That fee generates about $1.1 million a year, enough to upgrade the county's two transfer stations and later operate a disposal system, where waste would be picked up by private haulers then trucked by the county to landfills outside the county.
Dubben cautioned that negotiations leading to an independent Otsego County system will be delicate as the three member counties divide assets and responsibilities.
``For that, we're going to need support from the other counties, from the MOSA board and from the state,'' he said.
Otsego County Board Chairman James Powers, R-Butternuts, said he believes if the Otsego County Board of Representatives strongly supports the move toward independence, it will happen.
``I think our residents have had enough of MOSA,'' he said.
Clarvoe said she sees many advantages in a county-run system.
``I think we could emphasize recycling, composting and we might have a materials exchange so we could reuse more and cut down on what we throw out.''
Clarvoe, a former president of the League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area, noted the League has long been interested in solid-waste matters.
During the years, the League has overseen collections of junk mail and tires, pushing to have these materials recycled rather than discarded. In the 1980s, the League had a contest challenging people to reduce the amount of garbage they produced, a competition meant to encourage the community to examine its output of garbage.
When MOSA was proposed as a solution to the county's solid-waste problems in the 1980s, the League opposed having Otsego County join, Clarvoe noted.
``We didn't like the way it was set up,'' she said.
MOSA is arranged as a business with garbage as its commodity. Its rules penalize counties for reducing their waste, though reducing waste is highly desirable in other ways. When Arnold addressed the Otsego County Board in September, he noted that if the county set up its own system, it need not encourage more generation of waste.
For that reason and for opportunities to reduce the waste stream, the county might be better off on its own, Clarvoe said.
