West Haven nixes transfer station plan, residents to get larger recycling bins instead

WEST HAVEN — City officials voted to discard a $1 million transfer station and recycling plant project Monday, instead directing federal funding to purchasing 16,000 65-gallon recycling bins for residents.

Mayor Dorinda Borer said her mayoral predecessor Nancy Rossi’s allocation of $1 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding for a Helm Street transfer station was “a good idea initially,” but additional costs such as transporting bulk waste and recycling and staffing the station have led her to reconsider.

She proposed an idea to the City Council Monday that is “keeping in the spirit of what we originally wanted to do with the funds”: buying large recycling bins for residents.

“We’re never going to get this type of funding again to roll out a program like this,” she said.

Borer said the recycling bins provided to West Haven residents, which have no lids and are smaller than industry-standard lidded bins, may be among the smallest in the state. The larger bins with lids are expected to prevent residential recycling from being scattered across the city due to inclement weather and wild animals, and will also prevent recycling from getting wet in rain — a costsaving proposition for the city, as the rate municipalities pay to dispose of waste and recycling is measured by weight.

The project would also be eligible for further grant funding, supplanting about $20,000 of the city’s costs, she said.

The bins eyed for purchase would have bars on the lids compatible with trash haulers that automate parts of the hauling process, which is intended to make for a neater and safer pick-up. Borer said the city is going out to bid for a hauling contract this summer. She said the city’s waste disposal contract, negotiated as part of a municipal cooperative, is also due to be re-bid; the city hopes that a more efficient recycling process can be used as leverage to negotiate a better rate for the city within that cooperative.

The proposal was received warmly by members of the council, who said it would address a need in the city.

Council Chairman Nicholas Pascale, D-At Large, said such a project provides residents with something “tangible” to demonstrate how the city is spending its allocation of federal pandemic relief funds to benefit residents.

Council Majority Leader Christopher Vargo, D-9, said he already has a similarly sized recycling toter that has worked well for him.

Councilwoman Meli Garthwait, R-At Large, said she believes the program is an efficient way to channel the last council’s advocacy for more recycling within the city. However, she said large recycling bins can often be targets for theft, and wondered whether the city would be able to prevent against such a thing by allowing residents to write their address on the bins.

Borer said there are still some logistical questions, such as whether addresses can be written on the bins considering the bins would come bearing logos. She said the manufacturer provides an option for bins to come with bar codes that would, among other things, link those bins with specific addresses, but the city was unsure the additional cost for that measure is worthwhile.

Other open logistical questions are where the city will store its surplus bins and how many bins would be distributed to residential buildings depending on the number of units. Borer said the city expects to develop answers soon in preparation for an earlysummer rollout.

“We’re meeting pretty aggressively because we want to get them out,” she said.

The city’s previous forays into making changes to its waste and recycling efforts in recent years have been met with skepticism and resistance from many residents.

The Rossi administration implemented a statefunded grant expected to cut down on waste by separating organic waste from bulk trash, but the program had only a 20 percent participation rate by the time the pilot funds had expired.

A plan to amend a city ordinance to make participation in such a program mandatory did not pass, although it did achieve some positive results for the city, which reportedly saw a 9 percent increase in recycling and an 11.6 percent reduction in waste from the previous year.