NEWBURYPORT — Mayor John Moak said a solution to the recent proposals and negotiations regarding the embattled Crow Lane landfill does not look promising.

New Ventures, which owns the often stench-plagued landfill, is in negotiations with the state attorney general's office and the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a plan to cap the landfill by the end of the year. Those plans are secret and do not involve city officials.

At the same time, New Ventures has put forth a proposal to the city to allow more trucks to dump material — the same type of building demolition waste that has been the root of the problems for the city and neighbors for nearly a half decade — at the dump in order to cap the landfill by year's end.

Moak said New Ventures will likely not sign the deal with the state unless the City Council accepts the company's proposal to allow in more volume to the landfill, which would require the city to reopen its 2002 Host Community Agreement. As part of the agreement, the city is negotiating to free itself of liability associated with Crow Lane.

The mayor said that on Thursday the attorney general's office, which will not comment on the deal in the works with New Ventures, was given a two-week extension by the courts to get the deal signed.

But Moak said he just doesn't see the two things working out.

"I don't see us getting anything done in that time frame," the mayor said, adding later that, "I just don't see them gelling right now."

Yesterday morning, after a General Government Committee meeting, Moak posted a notice for a special City Council meeting on Wednesday to discuss the landfill. But by the afternoon, that meeting was canceled due to schedule conflicts, Moak said.

Moak said if the council does not approve the proposal, it is unclear what may happen.

"I don't what that means," he said. "I have to tell you: I don't know."

A possible scenario is "that New Ventures won't sign the agreement with the state," Moak said.

"They can't sign that agreement because (without it) there is no way to increase the volume" at the landfill, he said.

City officials say rejecting or accepting New Ventures' proposal is a difficult decision.

On one hand is the testimony of landfill neighbors, who for more than four years have been subjected to smells of rotten eggs and burnt matches that come from the decomposing gypsum at the dump. That alone is a compelling reason to reject New Ventures plan, they say.

However, New Ventures has also threatened lawsuits based on the DEP's ruling that the site is a 21E site, a contaminated site, which could make the city liable for shutting it down, which comes with an expensive, yet unknown, price tag.

Councilor Brian Derrivan, who is the councilor for Ward 5, where the landfill is located, said he doesn't think the proposal would pass if the council took a vote right now. Derrivan said the council will likely need more time to discuss the situation.

"My gut would say ... if we were to vote now, that it would not pass," he said. "That being said, we need to do our due diligence. ... (I)t is irresponsible for us not to do that."

Derrivan said there is also a "trust issue" with William Thibeault, owner of New Ventures.

"Why are we to believe that all of a sudden he is going to do everything right?" Derrivan said. "It is a trust issue. We don't trust him. We don't trust that he is going to do what he says he is going to do."

Thibeault refuses to talk to The Daily News about the situation.

New Ventures wants to bring in more volume to the landfill in order to make the site "financially viable," Moak said. He said that stems mostly from the change in policy a few years ago that required that gypsum get mixed with soil before getting put on a landfill.

The mayor said New Ventures went to the state to say they needed more volume to make up that cost. New Ventures makes money by trucking in material.

"This volume issue has always been lingering, but nobody has brought it to the City Council until now," Moak said. "We can say no, we don't want New Ventures to make one dime on this, and that is fine with me.

"But at sometime, I'd like to see some kind of agreement that allows for this project to get done. That is why I'm looking at this," Moak said.

In a May 22 e-mail to the City Council regarding scheduling a special meeting — which took place this week — Moak said that he was asking the council "to agree to the volume issue, in exchange for some release from 21E."

Later, in an interview, he said those may not have been the best words to use and that what he was trying to say is that he wanted the council to consider the proposal since it takes council and his approval to reopen the Host Community Agreement.

"I'm saying I want the City Council to get involved in this," he said of the e-mail. "I'm asking them to look at it and consider that."

But Ward 1 Councilor Larry McCavitt, who said he also thinks the council would vote down the proposal if it went to a vote right now, said that encouragement from the mayor to accept the deal is "brutal."

"And he hadn't even seen the information himself, and he is urging us to go for it," he said, referring to the information about the agreement with New Ventures and the state. "Where is the leadership everyone is talking about?"