Sarah Trafton reports for Columbia-Greene Media that Catskill town officials said May 17 that Wheelabrator Technologies will not attempt to put an ash landfill in Catskill. The New Hampshire-based municipal waste combustion company had an application before the Department of Environmental Conservation, and would have needed approvals from the Town and Village of Catskill for its proposal to bury ash with dioxins near the Hudson River and Route 9W in Smith’s Landing. The company said May 17 that it no longer needed to haul 445,000 tons of ash annually from Wheelabrator’s incinerators in Peekskill, Hudson Falls and Poughkeepsie to Catskill because they have alternate locations for their waste. “Their parent company has purchased another company with three dumpsites,” Village Trustee Joseph Kozloski said company officials told him May 16. “They don’t need to go forward with it [Peckham] for now.” Environmental activists had rallied opposition to the proposal locally in recent weeks, and the Town of Catskill's Board issued a statement May 9, posted to its website about the Wheelabrator proposal, saying, "[a]s individual residents and taxpayers, every member of the Town Board opposes new business uses that could increase pollution in the town of Catskill. " Kozloski says he met with Senior Manager of Business Development Mark Schwartz and Senior Infrastructure Manager Jay Insley of Wheelabrator at the quarry site May 16. Village President Vincent Seeley said, “We have not yet received an official letter from the company but we have verbal confirmation that the company has decided to take a different direction.” Read the full story at HudsonValley360.com.