Tunnel on Danbury, Conn.'s West Side Not a Viable Option in I-84 Plan
A proposed and much-discussed half-mile-long tunnel to
straighten Interstate 84 between Exits 2 and 4 on Danbury's west side is among
several options being considered by the Connecticut Department of
Transportation (CTDOT).
But leaders involved in planning the billion-dollar
reconstruction of I-84 through Danbury do not consider the tunnel to be a
viable part of the project, according to the Connecticut Post.
"We are wrapping up the concept development phase
[this] fall and the tunnel is one of the concepts, but we have over 20 that we
have looked at, and [the] ones that don't make sense don't go very far,"
explained Andy Fesenmeyer, CTDOT's project manager for the I-84 Danbury
Project. "But we do want to make sure that we have looked at every single
option."
By the agency's own assessment, the prospects of cutting a
tunnel under University Boulevard would not "reduce congestion or improve
mobility on the highway," and therefore "It is recommended that this
concept be dismissed from further consideration."
That is good news to state Rep. Bob Godfrey, the dean of
Danbury's Hartford delegation.
"This tunnel proposal destroys two neighborhoods, a
business community and cuts under Western Connecticut State University,"
noted Godfrey, who has represented Danbury for 32 years.
"This ain't gonna fly," he told the CTPost online
news site.
Why, then, did CTDOT call attention to the tunnel option in
a late September tweet, along with two other project concepts?
Fesenmeyer responded by telling the Post that the
transportation department wants to be transparent about investigating every
option.
"We look at everything. So, we say, ‘What would it look
like if we straighten the highway?'" he explained. "We don't want someone
to come back to us later and say, ‘You didn't investigate the tunnel
option.'"
The design choice is one of three plans currently on the
I-84 Danbury Project website to improve the stretch between the New York state
line and Exit 8.
While it is yet to be funded by the state Legislature, the
I-84 Danbury Project is at least a generation away from completion, the Post
reported, although smaller upgrades related to the overall effort could begin
later in the decade.
The next public outreach meeting, which has not been
scheduled, will likely follow two project meetings this fall. The first was
scheduled for Oct. 14 between the project team and Danbury officials, and the
second will be with the project advisory committee, a large group of municipal
and private sector leaders from the greater community.
The goal is to finish the concept plan by the end of 2022,
after which a specific proposal would be developed to be funded, engineered and
vetted.
"This is not a simple operation with easy answers —
we're talking about billions of dollars and a huge undertaking,"
Fesenmeyer said, adding that CTDOT estimates were that the construction might
not begin until the mid-2040s. "But there could be some early action in
the mid-to-late 2020s."
Godfrey said re-engineering of the interstate and its exits
was overdue, especially in the area of the Danbury Fair mall.
"The highway came through Danbury in 1963, and
professionals have learned a lot in the last 60 years about what's wrong with
left-handed exit ramps and the highway being more curvy than straight," he
explained. "It was a good design for its time, but that time has
passed."
East Haven senior housing project at former high school lauded for energy efforts
EAST HAVEN — A mixed-income senior housing development in
town has been honored by a sustainable building group, according to a release.
The Tyler, WinnDevelopment’s 70-unit project inside a former
high school building, was recognized by the Green Building Council and
Novogradic “for its innovative approach using state and federal historic tax
credits to incorporate the industry’s strictest standard for energy performance
in a residential historic adaptive reuse project,” the release said.
The nonprofit council gave the project its 2021 Award of
Excellence, the release said, which “honors excellence in green building design
and construction that supports the broader goals of using the built to combat
climate change within the state of Connecticut and beyond.”
According to the release, The Tyler is expected to use 20
percent less energy than new Energy Star construction, and also avoided “18,000
metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions” by reusing the former school.
The housing project also was honored recently with the 2021
Novogradac Journal of Tax Credit Award for Historic Rehabilitation, the release
said.
“Projects like The Tyler demonstrate the inherent
sustainability of adapting historic structures to meet 21st century
environmental expectations,” Adam Stein, executive vice president of
WinnDevelopment, said in the release. “This award-winning effort would not have
been possible without the foresight and support of the Connecticut Department
of Housing, Connecticut Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) and the State Historic
Preservation Office.”
The Tyler, which is managed by WinnResidential, opened in
October 2020, the release said, and had been vacant for almost 21 years after
being used as the town’s high school. The “academic core” of the building now
houses 67 one-bedroom units and three two-bedroom units, available for a range
of incomes, the release said.
Housing, development pitched for Bethel with a twist that could change the future of a road
BETHEL — A proposal to bring residential and commercial
buildings to a Stony Hill Road parcel of land could bring about a zoning change
that could be applicable to other parcels along the road.
A new overlay district option is being proposed as part of
an application before the Planning and Zoning Commission tied to the former
Stony Hill Inn property on Route 6.
The applicant, Upstream Properties LLC, is looking to build
residential and commercial buildings on the parcel of vacant Stony Hill Road
land between the Copper Square townhouse development and Mountain Laurel Plaza.
Bob Gleason — one of the owners of Upstream Properties —
said the proposed Grand Stony Hill Village development would have three
apartment buildings towards the rear of the property, two 5,000-square-foot
commercial buildings near the road and a pocket park.
As part of its application, the developer is seeking a
zoning regulation text amendment that would create a Stony Hill Mixed Use
Overlay District option for the Route 6 business zone, intended to increase
permissible residential unit density.
For parcels at least five acres in size, up to 20 units per
acre would be allowed within the proposed zoning change, compared to 10 units
currently permitted in the Route 6 zone.
Each zone proposed would be an independent overlay zoning
district, created with the Planning and Zoning Commission’s approval, in order
to accomplish a specific purpose.
Attorney Peter Olson said the text amendment would provide a
“floating zone” option for applicants looking to develop large parcels in the
Route 6 district, and each overlay district would apply an additional layer of
regulations and authorized uses in supplementation of the underlying Route 6
zone requirements and provisions.
Each would have “unique and narrowly drawn permitted uses, bulk
and dimensional standards and other applicable zoning provisions” in order to
“accommodate unique and desirable development that is consistent with the long
range, orderly development of Route 6 but that may not be accommodated by the
established zoning of the area,” according to the proposed text amendment.
Both commercial and multi-family residential dwellings would
be permitted in Stony Hill Mixed Use Overlay Districts as long as they are in
locations deemed appropriate by the Planning and Zoning Commission.
There would be land size, frontage and other requirements
for utilization of a Stony Hill Mixed Use Overlay District, including that the
proposed developments are in accordance with the town’s comprehensive plan.
Olson said a lot of thought into how to accomplish a
streamlined process for Stony Hill Mixed Use Overlay Districts.
“What we see right now in the Route 6 zoning district is an
approach where every individual developer comes to you and says, ‘We need this
one or two small tweaks to the regulations to make our development work for
us,’” he said.
Requests that are granted may work for an individual
project, Olson said, but not so well for others “The result can be a rather
jumbled mess, and that is not great as far as zoning regulations go,” he said.
The proposed SHMUOD approach would simplify the process in a
way that maintains the Planning and Zoning Commission’s “ultimate control over
whether things can happen,” Olson said, while also letting developers “operate
under a streamlined approach.”
It would make the zoning process efficient not only for
Upstream Properties’ proposal, he said, but future Route 6 developments as
well.
Olson said the process would be similar to the one
applicants currently go through when seeking a regulation change, except it
would save more time.
“The process (would be) very similar to how things work now
if I were to ask you to change the regulations,” Olson said. “It just
streamlines it and it changes the order of things a bit to make it a more
efficient process for developers and (the commission).”
It would start with an applicant filing to have the SHMUOD
applied to a particular piece of property in the Route 6 zoning district
“That’s a map amendment, and they’d bring with that a
conceptual plan with quite a bit of detail required,” Olson said.
A developer would be required to itemize ways in which their
proposed map and site plan do not comply with Route 6 district zone
requirements, he said, and the Planning and Zoning Commission would determine
appropriateness.
If approved, the commission would then act to apply the
overlay zone to the property and approve the developer’s conceptual site plan.
There is an ongoing Planning and Zoning public hearing on
Upstream Properties’ application, which is scheduled to continue during the
commission’s next meeting on Oct. 26.
Connecticut Port Authority misses second permit deadline
New London — The Connecticut Port Authority has for the
second time missed a deadline to obtain a federal permit needed for a
portion of the $235.5 million State Pier construction project.
But while the Aug. 31 and now Oct. 15 deadlines have come
and gone, both the CPA and its partners - the team of Danish wind company
Ørsted and utility company Eversource - continue to express optimism the
project will move forward as planned.
Andrew Lavigne, the CPA’s manager of business development
and special projects, said the two sides plan to meet and either revise the
deadline or revise the Harbor Development Agreement and sublease agreement.
“A new deadline has not yet been reached, however we will be
meeting with our partners regularly with the goal of identifying a mutually
agreeable timeline as soon as possible,” Lavigne said. “The Authority and our
partners remain committed to developing a plan to deliver the project in its
full scope. Altered scope has not been discussed in our meetings."
In the meantime, Lavigne said work crews continue progress
on permitted work at State Pier that is not dependent on the federal permit,
“including construction of the northeast bulkhead and heavy-lift pad, both of
which have seen significant progress this month.”
Ørsted/Eversource can not dredge the
Thames River without the federal permit.
The Port Authority earlier this year had agreed to certain
deadlines with Ørsted/Eversource as part of an amendment to a Harbor
Development Agreement, the document that governs the project. Ørsted and
Eversource have pledged $70 million toward the project with the
state contributing the rest.
In exchange for releasing their funding up front,
Ørsted and Eversource secured the ability to pull back their funding if the
Port Authority does not meet certain milestones such as obtaining the
federal permit.
Ørsted and Eversource have plans to transform State Pier
into a offshore wind hub to support its planned offshore wind farms.
While the Port Authority has obtained a permit from the
state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the progress of the
permit application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is unclear. The Port
Authority’s board, at an Oct. 5 meeting, approved a revised memorandum of
agreement between the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office and Army
Corps that is to be incorporated into a federal permit. It is one sign that the
permit process is ongoing.
Port Authority Board Chairman David Kooris said at that Oct.
5 meeting said he believed the permit application was “working its way through
the various internal approvals.”
“We remain confident that it’s on track and I don’t know if
I’d use the word imminent, but coming very soon," Kooris said of permit
application.
Ørsted and Eversource released the following statement
to The Day On Monday.
"Ørsted and Eversource are Connecticut’s partner in
addressing climate change, supporting economic development and job creation
through offshore wind and the State Pier redevelopment project. With the agreed
upon federal permit deadline having passed, we will be meeting with the
Connecticut Port Authority and Gateway Terminal to assess the impact, if any,
on the overall project schedule. We remain excited about the transformation of
State Pier and its benefits to Connecticut."
Port Authority Board member John Johnson said he expects to
have a permit in hand by next month and both sides remain committed to the
project.
“There is a determination not only on the part of the CPA
but our partners Ørsted and Eversource, that this thing is going to happen. We
are like bulldogs. We have no thoughts that this is going to fall apart,”
Johnson said.
CT launches $200M in competitive grant programs for municipalities, public-private partnerships
Gov. Ned Lamont on Monday announced the launch of two new
competitive grant programs designed to disburse up to $200 million to promote
economic development in Connecticut cities and towns.
The first, known as the Innovation Corridor Program, is expected
to select and fund two or more “transformational” projects in major urban areas
that will create new jobs in high-growth fields such as data science, advanced
manufacturing and insurance technology. The program aims to facilitate the
creation of at least 15,000 new jobs, state officials said, and will grant up
to $100 million over five years.
Municipalities are being encouraged to apply in conjunction
with potential partners, including private businesses, developers,
post-secondary education institutions and philanthropic or nonprofit entities.
The second initiative, known as the Connecticut Communities
Challenge Program, will fund a wide range of projects throughout the state
designed to improve the liveability and vibrancy of recipient cities and towns
and create approximately 3,000 new jobs. The Department of Economic and
Community Development, which is administering the program, said projects
centered on essential infrastructure, transit-oriented development, housing,
mobility and improvements to public spaces would be prioritized.
DECD expects to disburse up to $100 million through the
Connecticut Communities Challenge Program over five years. Grant awards will
range between $1 million and $10 million per project.
As with the Corridor Program, municipalities, economic
development agencies and regional government councils are being encouraged to
apply with private businesses, developers and other organizations.
Applications are now being accepted for both programs.
“Investing in our communities and high-growth industry
sectors is a key part of our plan to accelerate long-lasting and equitable
economic development in Connecticut,” Lamont said in a statement. “These two
new programs will have wide-ranging impacts as we emerge stronger than ever
from the pandemic, creating thousands of new jobs, improving the vibrancy and
quality of life in our communities and making all corners of the state even
more attractive for investment and opportunity.”
The programs’ launch came the same day Lamont
announced a partnership involving the Connecticut State Colleges and
Universities system, the Office of Workforce Strategy and Amazon Web Services
that will offer education and technical skills training to thousands of
Connecticut residents. That initiative is expected to prepare over 2,000
residents for jobs and opportunities in cloud computing by 2024.
With trash plant at death’s door, is it time for state leadership?
Tom Condon
When the trash-to-energy plant in Hartford’s South Meadows
broke down in November 2018, garbage started piling up inside the facility’s
two cavernous storage areas. And kept piling up. And piled up some more.
The refuse was accumulating because operators could not hire
enough trucks and drivers to haul it to out-of-state landfills.
By January 2019, the facility was jammed floor-to-roof with
thousands of tons of trash, and officials were days away from a lose-lose
decision: either start storing garbage outside in the parking lot, or tell
towns not to send any more trash.
“It was nerve-wracking,” said Thomas D. Kirk, president
and CEO of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority, known by its
acronym MIRA, which oversees the facility. “Thank God we didn’t have a fire.”
What saved the day was getting the plant repaired, partially
in January and fully in March of 2019, so it could again burn garbage. The
catastrophic breakdown in 2018-19 was neither the first nor the last time the
aging and failing plant went on the fritz, but it was the most serious failure.
Was it a harbinger, a dress rehearsal for a major trash
calamity?
It’s possible. Bad as it was, the 2018-19 breakdown did not
trigger a sense of urgency to address what many insiders consider an impending
crisis in the state’s solid waste management system, said MIRA ad hoc board
member Thomas Swarr, a retired United Technologies engineer who lives in
Hartford.
“Is the plan to sit back and wait for a complete disaster,
with trash piling up in the streets, before anybody does anything?” Swarr said.
After years-long efforts to upgrade the plant with either
private or public funds failed, the MIRA board voted late last year to shut the
plant down by July 1, 2022, and truck about 500,000 tons of trash a year to
out-of-state landfills. With the approximately 400,000 tons already being
shipped out of state, more than a third of the state’s 2.4 million tons of
garbage will be buried in another state. Hundreds of thousands of tons of
construction and demolition debris, which is not counted or treated as
municipal solid waste, also are shipped to out of state landfills by private
contractors.
What is the plan?
MIRA went out with requests for proposals in the spring for
landfill space and hauling, and the bids are in. Though he couldn’t line up
enough trucks in 2018, Kirk was “cautiously optimistic” he could do it this
time. He said three years ago he was looking for trucks on a short-term basis;
this time it is on five-year contracts. He appears to have been right. Kirk
told town officials during an online meeting on Oct. 14 that he’s received
enough bids to transport and bury MIRA’s trash, possibly as far away as Alabama
or Michigan.
He said terms are being negotiated but forecast a tipping
fee $114-$119 a ton in the first year, going to $139-$146 in the 5th year, the
lower number if all the towns agree not to opt out of the agreement. The
present fee is $105 a ton.
But even with an agreement, Kirk is still not out of the
woods. There is the matter of keeping the plant going until June 30. “It’s held
together with duct tape and chicken wire,” said Swarr, “and could fail
catastrophically.”
Kirk concedes that the plant is “on its last legs; old,
tired and ready for retirement.”
And there is the challenge of keeping the skilled plant
operators on staff through the closing date. Facing the prospect of
unemployment, they could jump to other jobs.
As it tries to meet these challenges, MIRA appears to be
unraveling. Four of its eleven regular board members have resigned as of
Sept. 30 this year. That presents problems because many important issues
require a supermajority of eight board votes — something of a challenge with
only seven members. The quasi-public agency has long had trouble attracting
board members; this time “we may have to send up a red flag” to state leaders,
said Kirk. But maybe not. When Kirk announced the board shortage at the Oct.
14 meeting, Thomaston First Selectman Ed Mone offered to serve on the
board.
Why did others leave?
“If we’re not going to create a solution and just truck
waste out of the state, there’s no reason for me to be there,” said John Adams,
one of the board members who resigned. He is a former Granby first selectman
and a geologist who works for a firm that deals with contaminated properties.
Also, MIRA’s revenues have taken a beating in recent years.
Electricity it once sold for 12 cents a kilowatt hour now goes for two to three
cents. China’s decision in 2018 to ban the import of most residential
recyclables turned a profit center into a loss center. And its four jet-powered
generators, backups for when the grid is at peak demand, are being phased out.
The jets once produced $16 million in payments to MIRA. Now the number is
closer to $6 million and will be down to zero in 2023.
As a result, tipping fees, what towns pay to have their
trash picked up, have increased by 35% in the last two years.
Finally, three towns, Roxbury, North Branford and East
Hartford, left the agency this year, leaving it with 48 members. East
Hartford’s departure was notable because its mayor, Marcia Leclerc, who is not
seeking reelection, was one of the MIRA board members who resigned. She said
she got a better deal, one that would save her town $104,000 a year. Hartford,
the host community, has sent out a request for proposals for its trash hauling.
“We have to consider all options,” said Mayor Luke Bronin, like Swarr an ad hoc
MIRA board member.
The plan after 2027? There isn’t one.
The trash plant’s woes suggest to Swarr, Bronin, Kirk, MIRA
board chair Don Stein and others that the state has to take a greater role in
the management of its solid waste. “The state has some great ideas, but they
don’t legislate them,” said Stein, who is also first selectman of Barkhamsted.
Swarr wonders if solid waste management should be structured
as a public utility. “There are some natural monopolies. This may be one of
them.”
“Our regional and statewide waste disposal crisis is
reaching its final stages,” said Bronin. “The plant is obsolete and unreliable
and will soon be unavailable. As a state, we have to recognize that a
financially viable, environmentally responsible program has to be a
public-private partnership requiring resources beyond the capacity of any
town.”
Such a partnership was what officials thought they were
getting in 2014.
Old coal plant
An irony in the return to putting garbage in a hole in the
ground is that landfilling was what the state was trying to get away from when
it created MIRA’s predecessor agency, the Connecticut Resources Recovery
Authority, or CRRA, in the 1970s. Landfills, especially back then, pollute
groundwater and emit the potent greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide.
Turning trash into electricity was the way to go, and six
trash-to-energy plants were created in the state (five remain). In the South
Meadows, officials retrofitted an old coal-burning power plant into a
trash-burning facility (though for years it burned some coal with the trash).
One unfortunate aspect of the conversion was that officials chose a method
called “refuse derived fuel,” meaning that the trash was shredded before it was
burned, as opposed to “mass burn” plants, where trash is pushed directly into
the boiler.
Kirk said at the time the refuse derived method was thought
to encourage more recycling. But that turned out not to be the case. All it did
was add millions of dollars of cost.
Nonetheless, the regional program moved ahead. In 1982, some
70 towns signed 30-year contracts to have their trash burned and turned into
electricity.
Things went well enough for two decades. The agency did hit
a low point in 2001 when it loaned $220 million to energy giant Enron, which
shortly afterwards went bankrupt. Only about three-quarters of the money
was recovered, a serious waste of public funds.
As that decade wore on, it was becoming clearer that the
sprawling brick and steel trash-to-energy plant was in need of overhaul or
replacement. When the first contracts were up in 2012, only about 50 towns
signed up for new 15-year contracts, the ones that end in 2027.
The General Assembly attempted to solve the problems in
2014. The solons passed a statute that among other things directed the state
Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, DEEP, to identify a
“provider of solid waste management services” to redevelop the and modernize
the plant and implement new diversion practices to reduce the amount of trash
going into the plant. MIRA would then negotiate an agreement with the private
partner.
The law also changed the name of the agency from the
Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority to the Materials Innovation and
Recycling Authority, apparently to suggest a new start and a new emphasis on
diverting and reusing waste materials rather than burning or burying them.
To that end, the new law also directed DEEP to update the
state’s solid waste management plan by 2016 to include a strategy for
“diverting, through source reduction, reuse and recycling, not less than 60%”
of the state’s solid waste by 2024, about twice the current diversion level.
The plan was updated, but the goal now seems well out of reach.
In any event, DEEP identified a contractor, a Spanish-U.S.
entity, the Sacyr Rooney Recovery Team to upgrade the plant and the recycling
facility. However, MIRA and Sacyr Rooney could not reach a financial agreement
acceptable to the member towns.
Kirk said it was going to take about $330 million to update
the trash-to-energy plant and recycling facility and make other improvements.
It would have required the towns to pay tipping fees of $145 a ton, up from
about $85 a ton, and sign 30-year contracts. The towns weren’t interested.
Because Sacyr-Rooney needed the trash from all the towns to generate adequate
revenue, and towns can opt out of the program, the company said it needed
guarantees, Kirk recalled.
MIRA went to the state for the $330 million, and the state
rejected the request. There was discussion of a smaller amount to keep the
plant going until 2027, but that also went nowhere. DEEP Commissioner Katie
Dykes said the 2014 statute envisioned private, not public, funding.
As DEEP viewed it, MIRA was just trying to perpetuate the
trash-burning status quo and, said Deputy Commissioner Betsey Wingfield, “$330
million is a lot of money for the status quo.” In retrospect, asking a private
entity to put up hundreds of millions, but then let MIRA control the program,
as the statute envisioned, may have doomed the deal, Adams said.
So it fell through. “After four years, we were back to
square one,” said MIRA chairman Stein.
Seeing no other alternative, the MIRA board announced that
it would shut the plant down by July 1, 2022 and truck the trash to
out-of-state landfills.
That wasn’t the end of it.
Test of wills
DEEP was not happy with this decision. DEEP officials had
been trying to push MIRA to embrace the new era of waste management that
focuses on recovering and reusing materials and keeping them out of the waste
stream. As CT Mirror environmental writer Jan Ellen Spiegel has reported, there is a growing movement to get food
wastes out of landfills or incinerators.
MIRA, on the other hand, has largely kept its focus on
solving the immediate problem, first by trying to keep the trash plant going
and then by shipping waste out of state.
That was the gist, more or less, of the plan of operation
MIRA submitted to DEEP in July 2020. Dykes rejected it, saying it “represents a
false choice and a bad deal for the taxpayers and … the environment.“ Kirk
disagreed, saying in a letter to Dykes that choices other than restoring the
trash plant or shipping to out-of-state landfills “simply do not exist.”
Another dispute arose over whether MIRA needed a new permit,
or a modification to its existing permit, to turn the trash-to-energy plant
into a transfer station. The department initially resisted the idea, but has
since signaled it could approve a permit modification to allow transfer until
2027. MIRA applied for a permit modification on Sept. 29.
If the modification is approved, the state will go back to
the past, to a solution — dumping in some other state’s land — that nobody is
happy with.
“Shifting waste from a poor urban community (Hartford) to a
poor rural community (where many out-of-state landfills are located) hardly
seems like a win for either the environment or social justice,” Swarr wrote in
an email earlier this year. “It certainly is not consistent with the
state’s Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy.”
And, as he and others have observed, sending scores of heavy
trucks each day to distant landfills sends more pollutants into the atmosphere.
That 2016 solid waste plan says landfilling should only be a
“last resort.” It also calls on the state to manage its own waste and not send
it elsewhere.
By 2027, there needs to be a plan in place to adopt the next
generation of materials management infrastructure, and it is far from clear
that MIRA is the agency to prepare that plan. Two current or former board
members fault the agency for weak planning.
“MIRA has done a poor job of long term planning,” said
Leclerc.
“I get that we have to solve the immediate crisis, but there
should have been a parallel effort to plan for the next phase,” said Swarr.
The state’s solid waste plan says MIRA’s “focus on operating
existing facilities rather than developing new ones” may prevent MIRA from
leading the charge to the future.
Perhaps surprisingly, Kirk agrees. He said if the state is
to follow its solid waste management plan and manage its own waste, it will
have to make significant infrastructure investments. He said it doesn’t appear
that MIRA has the statutory authority or capability, never mind the resources,
for this task.
What’s coming
It’s impossible to know what 2027 will look like, whether
MIRA will still exist, whether waste management will become a public utility,
whether the 80-acre trash plant site will be returned to Hartford for
remediation — no small task — and redevelopment. A Hartford solid waste task
force chaired by Swarr last year advocated for the creation of a network of
“smaller, distributed facilities to receive municipal waste (and) employ state-of-the-art
separation technology to recover organics and potentially recyclable
materials.”
“These facilities would be a necessary complement to efforts
to expand source separation of food waste and recyclables to absolutely
minimize waste sent for final disposal. “
When Dykes rejected MIRA’s plan of operation last year, two
environmental groups, the Energy Justice Network and the Connecticut Coalition
for Environmental Justice, applauded the decision and urged the department to
eschew incineration entirely.
Incineration is “the most expensive and polluting way to
manage waste or make energy — dirtier than coal burning and worse than direct
use of landfills,” wrote Sharon Lewis of the Connecticut Coalition and Mike
Ewall of the Justice Network.
Kirk vehemently disagrees. “Everything (in that sentence) is
wrong,” he said. He said air-cleaning technology has improved, and the
emissions of many trash-to-energy plants including Hartford’s are monitored
around the clock for compliance with pubic health standards.
Still, most people in the field, Kirk included, support more
reuse and recycling to keep materials our of incinerators or landfills. And
that may not be the best reason to recycle.
“In most cases, the biggest environmental benefit of
recycling comes not from avoiding incineration and landfilling but from
substituting recycled materials for virgin resources in production,” said Reid
Lifset, an industrial environmental management expert at the Yale School of the
Environment.
Environmentalists Lewis and Ewall urged Dykes toward the
Zero Waste philosophy — an approach that seeks to “maximize recycling, minimize
waste, reduce consumption and ensures that products are made to be reused,
repaired or recycled back into nature or the marketplace,” according to the
DEEP website.
The state has made real progress in some of these areas. One
pillar of Zero Waste is getting producers to take more responsibility for their
products at the end of their useful lives. This has led to recycling programs
for mattresses, electronics and paint. Plus, the Metropolitan District
Commission collects household hazardous wastes in Greater Hartford.
The General Assembly this year strengthened the bottle bill,
increasing the deposit from five to 10 cents and expanding the types of bottles
covered. On the subject of glass recycling, on Sept. 1, residents of 14 Western
Connecticut municipalities served by the Housatonic Resources Recovery
Authority began separating all “food-grade” glass containers — food jars,
liquor and wine bottles, beverage bottles — from their mixed single-stream
recycling bins and bringing them to local drop-off centers.
This not only separates recyclable “good glass” from
non-recyclable or “bad” glass, it increases public involvement in waste
management. The public has rarely been heard on this topic.
“Trash pickup is a service most people expect government to
perform, period,” said Adams. But public interest has been known to spur state
action.
Dykes has also convened a coalition of
more than 80 towns to explore ways to reduce the amount of waste the state
generates and improve reuse, recycling and organics collection, among other
measures. For example, the group is studying unit-based pricing, or
pay-as-you-throw, in which residents are charged based on the amount trash they
generate, the goal of which is to encourage more recycling and less throwaway
trash.
The department recently announced a $5 million grant program
to support local and regional unit-based pricing and organics recycling
efforts. A half-dozen communities including Middletown, Meriden and West Haven
are developing organics recycling programs.
“We’re getting some traction. There are really positive
things happening,” said deputy commissioner Wingfield.
In addition to the state programs, there is considerable
innovation underway in the private sector, in such areas as anaerobic digestion
(Quantum Biopower, Southington); materials sorting (Van Dyk Recycling
Solutions, Norwalk); and energy conversion (Green Waste Energy, Greenwich),
among others. In April, MIRA shut down its recycling facility — which, like the
trash plant, is in dire need of work — and contracted its recycling to Murphy
Road Recycling, which is building a $30 million, state-of-the-art recycling
facility in Berlin.
For all of this, the state is still a home-rule mishmash of
local and regional trash collection and recycling programs and policies. Some
towns are paying more than others, although often residents don’t realize it
because the cost is baked into their property tax bill.
Perhaps the question is whether to continue the incremental
improvements or go bigger, as California did when it passed a law requiring
residents and businesses to recycle organic waste, beginning Jan. 1, 2022. All
jurisdictions must provide organic waste collection services.
Organics make up about a third of Connecticut’s waste
stream. Removing them, along with more robust recycling, would greatly reduce,
or possibly eliminate, the need for out-of-state transport.
Zero Waste, said Swarr, is “an aspirational goal that is
physically impossible to achieve. While the initiatives are absolutely
necessary, they will not eliminate the need for disposal infrastructure.”
As he sees it, the impending closure of the Hartford
trash-to-energy plant, as well as the various innovations under way, offer a
remarkable opportunity for state leadership.
“Think about it, he said. “DEEP could step back and
reimagine the entire system.”