Much Odor About Trash
Garbage, or as the engineered like to refer to it, solid waste, is not a subject that most people gather around the proverbial kitchen table to discuss. Unless it’s about who is taking the trash out the night before pickup. Once the cans hit the curb though, that is usually the end of the thought process about what happens next. Yet, what happens next is precisely the part that has preoccupied so few in town that on a rainy Wednesday night 45 people filled the community room, with the lead pipe and Professor Plum Crazy. Of those 45, by my count, half were political flunkies. Of the non political flunkie set, there were clusters of representatives from trash hauling companies and the press. What’s the frequency kenneth?
Highlights of the meeting involved the usual display of Sturm und Drang helped by mother nature. some highlights. State Rep Bruce Morris apparently believes that public hearings shouldn’t be held on Wednesday nights because it was a Bible study night. Democratic Town Chair Gail Wall doesn’t want this public hearing held on this particular Wednesday because it was the night of Brien McMahon’s graduation. And the company that lost the bid, and then asked to submit a new bid undercutting the price of the winning bid, spoke about how they would be cheaper. Which prompted a reportedly heated exchange between DPW Director Hal Alvord and the company reps culminating in Alvord’s declaration that the action was “sleazy.”
Once again, the drama overshadows the issue. So a recap. CRRA hauls away trash from the Transfer station at Crescent Street and delivers it to Wheelabrator in Bridgeport, where it burns, baby, burns. This process costs us $81/ton, approximately, and will rise to $92/ton as soon as the contract expires at the end of the year, and maybe more in the months that follow. The proposal is to switch from CRRA to City Carting. And, this is the part that confuses people, separate the trash along the lines of commercial and residential. Currently all trash goes to Crescent street and some privately hauled trash goes to Meadow Street. The Meadow Street facility has been operated by Waste Management. Just to be clear, trash is being hauled to both facilities right now.
Residents of Village Creek and Harborview already are quite familiar with City Carting, because their trash is not collected by the City of Norwalk. Much of Norwalk, actually, has private trash collection, which makes it somewhat ironic that some of these very same residents have never inquired as to where their trash goes once it leaves those Belgian block curbs. Would it surprise anyone to find out that Meadow Street is a first stop?
A series of questions have been raised, which are interesting only to the extent that you look at them in context of current operations. A handy Chart:
- To what extent will truck traffic increase? (both trash trucks and large haul-off trucks)
- Currently: No Control Proposed: Can Control
- How noisy will that truck traffic be and when will it start? 4 AM?
- Currently: No Control (no evidence of 4am operations) Proposed: Can Control
- How will garbage odors be minimized or eliminated?
- Currently: No Control Proposed: Can Control
- Will the truck traffic be directed down Martin Luther King Drive to keep it off the already congested end of Meadow Street at Woodward Ave?
- Currently: No Control Proposed: Can Control
- Given the larger facility, does the city seek to expand its trash processing volume from the current Norwalk+Wilton processing to additional towns?
- Currently: Anyone Who Pays Can Dump Proposed: Anyone Who Pays Can Dump
- What recourse will Norwalk have to enforce City Carting’s promise to control odors, noise and traffic, as well as environmental degradation of the property?
- Currently: None Proposed: Yes
Naturally, the Common Council is incapable of separating fact from fiction and is inclined to render itself into a body of inaction while the very simple process of reading the proposal, comparing it to current operations, is ignored. Which stinks.
It stinks more when we look at the the FY 2008-09 city budget. Naturally, this same Common Council voted to approve a budget based on paying the contracted tipping fee to CRAA through the end of the year. And nothing more to accommodate the increased fees should the City stay with current operations and CRRA. So through inaction, the trash hauling line item will go over budget. Along with the astronomical rise in energy, and all the other little things that add up. A proactive measure would be to add a trash hauling surcharge to residents who use the Crescent street facility, which from an operational standpoint could mean, on trash pickup. I’d love to see the Common Council have to actually vote on increasing fees to collect trash while they dither on making a decision to contract on trash hauling. But that would mean that our government is thinking like an operational business, instead of some high school musical.