Jim Planck is reporting in The Daily Mail the Hunter Town Board has agreed to pay a $7,000 fine and to correct leachate problems at its former landfill under an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The landfill was closed and capped in 1991, and approximately 15 years later the town installed a system of reed beds designed to treat the leachate that drains from under the landfill cap. However, those reed beds were not maintained and discharge violations occurred. In December, Riverkeeper told the town it had reviewed the frequency and level of those non-compliant discharges over a five-year period. The environmental watchdog organization threatened to sue if the town did not take action to correct the problem. Under the consent order signed Tue., Feb. 16, the town must conduct a study to bring the landfill into compliance within a year of when that study is completed. One goal of the study will be to determine how much contamination is actually being produced by the landfill, and to demonstrate that the landfill is no longer adding anything to the groundwater. Hunter will not be on the hook alone for the cost of the corrective action. Under the cost-sharing agreement negotiated when the landfill closed, Hunter and Windham are each responsible for 26 percent of any landfill related costs, with the remaining 74 percent divided up among the other mountaintop towns that used it. Read the full story in The Daily Mail.