CARROLL, N.Y. - After a 10-year legal battle, the dispute between the Town of Carroll and Jones-Carroll Inc. is over.
The state Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the town and upheld its waste disposal law prohibiting the construction of a landfill or the expansion of an existing one.
"It has been on our backs forever," said Town Supervisor Jack Jones, a Democrat.
The move comes as Jones-Carroll looks to sell its Dodge Road landfill, which it closed five years ago. The potential buyer is Sealand Waste, part of Sealand Contractors Corp. near Rochester.
"Even though big industry comes in here and tries to bully us around, we won, and I think that's huge for the Town of Carroll residents," said Jones.
The recent court decision caps off years of back-and-forth litigation and town opposition to the sale. Jones said Sealand Waste planned to expand the site from its existing three acres to a potentially 50-acre cell.
"They were going to run multiple trucks, hundreds of trucks a day up through there on back roads. Would have been very dangerous for the town," said Jones.
The owners of Jones-Carroll would not comment on the ruling, but in a statement, their attorney, Anthony Nosek, questioned the town's ability to make unpopular expansion projects illegal, stating:
"What if towns decide to make existing farms or factories illegal? This is a dangerous precedent. Maybe even more important, the Town of Carroll has put its own citizens, honest and decent people, out of business. They have nothing to be proud of."
"We've basically done whatever we had to do to defend our town law," said Jones.
Engineers with Sealand Waste said despite the ruling, they'll keep trying to get the required permits for the project.
Jones says the town won't issue any, and he doesn't expected the state will either.