‘Waste crisis’ looms pending closure of Hartford plant | Connecticut & Region

Early last year, the agency also known as MIRA claimed it needed $330 million for a 30-year renovation plan in order to remain in operation. If it did not receive that money from the state, it would need to raise the fees paid by the 52 municipalities it serves from $83 per ton to $145.

If towns refused to pay the fees, MIRA officials said the plant would transform into a transfer station that would send municipal waste to landfills in New York, Ohio, and Virginia.

The state rejected MIRA’s request in July, with Gov. Ned Lamont saying he “cannot support sending hundreds of millions of state taxpayer or electric ratepayer dollars to MIRA to attempt to keep a failing, decades-old facility running.” He also called the proposal for a trash export operation “a nonstarter,” adding that it was “time for new ideas.”

Shanley told the Journal Inquirer on Wednesday that the proposed fee hike was “too high for municipalities to consider.” Absent state funding for refurbishment of failing equipment, Shanley said closing the trash-to-energy operation and moving toward exportation of waste is MIRA’s only option.

Under Dykes, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is seeking new ways to handle waste management in the state. In August, with officials from Bethel and Durham, DEEP formed the Connecticut Coalition for Sustainable Materials Management, or CCSMM. So far, 74 municipalities, including Coventry, East Hartford, Ellington, Manchester, Suffield, and Vernon, have joined the coalition.

Dykes said that while she is “really optimistic about the collaboration we’ve gotten from municipalities,” the state is facing a crisis of solutions, many of which require the lengthy process of state legislation.

Dykes said 87 percent of the 2.3 million tons of municipal waste that is not recycled or composted each year goes to the state’s five waste-to-energy plants. But as those facilities, including MIRA, have aged and become more expensive to maintain, towns are choosing other options, including sending trash to out-of-state landfills rather than paying increased fees.

In 2016, Dykes said, about 100,000 tons of municipal solid waste was shipped out of Connecticut for disposal. That number increased to 400,000 tons last year.

Dykes said the other four trash-to-energy plants do not have the capacity to serve all of the towns that currently send waste to MIRA, and she warned that landfill capacity out of state is also decreasing. She said relying on landfills as far as Ohio “is not sustainable environmentally or economically.”

Also, the cost of shipping trash out of state is not yet known. Instead, Dykes said, the state must fund sustainable options for waste management, which she said starts with “looking inside your trash can.” She noted that a 2015 study showed that about 30% of what Connecticut residents throw away is organic material such as grass clippings or food scraps, which she said “is not trash” and can be composted. Another 40% was found to be recyclable materials like papers, plastics, and metals.

One solution to the “crisis,” she said, is educating people about composting and recycling. Recyclable materials are often contaminated when combined with traditional trash, and must be thrown away.

Other options include extended producer responsibility, or EPR, which Dykes called “an elaborate name for an approach to managing materials that puts the cost of the disposal and recycling of products on the manufacturers who create them.” EPR policies, which are enacted legislatively, require manufacturers of products that are difficult to dispose of, like mattresses and tires, to take those products back when consumers need to throw them away. The companies then are responsible for disposing of them in an environmentally friendly manner.

Another potential solution is unit-based pricing, a system that Dykes compared to billing for utilities like heat and electricity. Municipalities in the state and throughout the country have experimented with various unit-based pricing methods, including pay-as-you-throw, a program through which residents purchase colored bags that trash must be thrown into in order to be removed from residents’ homes. Unit-based pricing can also allow residents to purchase smaller or larger trash cans based on how much they throw away.

Dykes said some municipalities throughout the country have found that unit-based pricing reduces waste by nearly half. “People recycle more; they’re more thoughtful about the amount of waste they’re generating and what they’re consuming in the first place,” she said.

Municipalities weigh their options

In Windsor Locks, a coalition member town, First Selectman Christopher Kervick has been pushing for pay-as-you-throw, but said the idea has not been politically viable in recent years. He said he plans to reintroduce the idea, however.

“Last year we took a serious look at” pay-as-you-throw, he said. “With that option we can reduce probably by 50% what goes in the landfills.”

Kervick and Dykes said the system reduces municipal budget constraints by decreasing the amount of money towns pay to ship trash to plants or landfills. Kervick said many still see the system as an added cost, though, because they are forced to directly purchase designated bags for their trash.

“In every town that tries this, there’s this political firestorm that it’s met with,” he said, adding that officials “lose the political will” to advance the policy.

Although Windsor Locks does not use MIRA as its trash plant, Kervick said he is concerned that if MIRA does shut down, the industry will create a monopoly.

“At some point, someone’s got to stand up and say there’s a better way,” he said.

Still, in Coventry, the first town in the state to implement a pay-as-you-throw system in 1995, results were mixed, said John Elsesser, who has served as town manager since 1988.

Elsesser said there were issues with the system, including costs associated with distribution of the bags. Towns with pay-as-you-throw systems generally rely on local stores to carry the bags for sale, but Elsesser said purchasing the bags and then distributing them to stores was expensive, and stores “didn’t like carrying them.”

There also are enforcement issues, Elsesser said. While waste collection trucks were previously manned by two employees — one driver and one collector — companies now have trucks with hydraulic arms that pick up trash bins that’s controlled by the driver inside the vehicle. Elsesser said that, even if drivers watch carefully as they dump garbage, “people will figure out how to not use the bags” and still have their garbage hauled off.

Now, Coventry offers different barrel sizes to residents as a way to manage the volume of trash it ships out of town. However, Elsesser said he hopes the state will consider experimenting with a “weigh-at-curb” system that will charge residents based on the volume of trash they put out each week. He said the system makes more sense than others, because towns are charged by the ton.

Regardless of the potential solutions, Elsesser said MIRA’s potential closure is an “urgent” issue for the state. “I don’t think anyone relishes the idea of us shipping trash to Pennsylvania and Ohio,” he said.

Ellington Public Works Director Timothy Webb said public education should be a factor in decreasing waste, adding that contaminated recyclables are a major problem. Webb said residents often ask why ballfields in town don’t have recycling containers, and he replies that people dump materials like diapers and pizza boxes in those containers, resulting in the town being hit with fees and otherwise recyclable material being shipped to waste facilities.

“People need to understand what can be recycled,” he said, noting that the Ellington town website contains information about the topic. He said waste reduction would be much easier if people had better recycling habits.

Webb said many people also put clothing and shoes inside their recycling bins. While those materials are recyclable, he noted that they also are considered contaminants when mixed with materials like plastic and paper. He said Ellington has containers on town property specifically for clothing, and officials encourage residents to use them.

“People’s habits have to change,” he said. ‘They have to be good recyclers.”

While the future of waste management in Connecticut is uncertain, Dykes said coalition members are continuing to meet and explore “innovative and sustainable” options for the state.

When forming CCSMM, Dykes expected about a dozen towns to sign up, she said. With 74 municipal leaders from both major political parties now part of the coalition, she said she believes there is “a pretty resounding recognition” that waste management “is a pretty urgent topic that we need to focus on” in Connecticut and the Northeast in general, which she said is at the forefront of waste management because of its population density.

“We’re all paying for the cost of disposal, and we’re all paying for every month or year that goes by” without addressing the “waste crisis,” she said.