New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Elicker doesn’t like waste plan backed by Harp
NEW HAVEN — The city’s previous mayor gave her blessing, but her successor will fight it.
Former Mayor Toni Harp, just before she left office, wrote to the owner of Murphy Road Recycling in December backing its plan to add putrescible municipal solid waste (household garbage) from area towns to the material it now receives and sends out from its transfer station at 19 Wheeler St.
Mayor Justin Elicker, in a letter to the company, said he only recently was told of the former mayor’s support and he wanted to clarify that he has “serious concerns” about the proposal and disagrees with his predecessor.
Murphy Road Recycling, located in a heavy industrial zone in the Annex section of New Haven since 2007, has asked the state
Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to approve its request for an updated permit to operate the new usage, as well as its revised stormwater plan.
The company’s current recycling permit covers construction and demolition material, as well as scrap metal, cardboard, paper, gypsum board and scrap tires, among other items, all characterized as dry waste.
It has proposed keeping the daily 967-ton cap with a 500-ton limit on putrescible municipal solid waste, or wet waste.
“From an environmental and environmental justice perspective, this site should not be allowed to expand,” Elicker said in an interview. “The community came out very strongly against the proposal. It is located in a community that has experienced racial, economic and social inequities. It is not right that New Haven is forced to process waste that the suburbs generate and that these types of sites continue to be built and expanded only in areas that have already experienced significant environmental degradation.”
Using the federal EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, the half-mile area surrounding Murphy Road Recycling shows a neighborhood in the 88th percentile for particulate matter compared to the rest of the state.
It is in the 87th percentile for ozone; 84th percentile for the national air toxics assessment (NATA) for diesel emissions; 90th percentile for hazardous waste proximity; 87th percentile for NATA cancer risk; and 94th percentile for Superfund proximity.
In his letter to Murphy Road Recycling owner Frank Antonacci, Elicker said his concerns include the “proposed land use” and the “broader issues related to environmental justice and statewide waste management.”
There are two parallel applications involving Murphy Road Recycling. In addition to the permit application to DEEP, there is a site plan and coastal review plan before the City Plan Commission.
“The city will undertake its review of the application(s) through our normal course of business and likewise continue to participate in DEEP’s review process for the project,” Elicker wrote.
Murphy Road Recycling did not respond to a request for comment.
Harp, in a recent interview, said she took a tour of Murphy Road Recycling with its owners to understand what they were proposing. She said they explained how they could combat the odors.
In testimony two years ago, the company said the garbage would be sprayed with high-pressure atomized water.
“I looked at the cleanliness of the existing plant. It frankly is very clean,” Harp said, in contrast to the New Haven Solid Waste and Recycling Authority facility on Middletown Avenue. She said Murphy Road Recycling “is doing as good a job as” NHSWRA.
By ordinance, haulers are mandated to bring New Haven trash and recycling to the Middletown Avenue transfer station.
Alder Gerald Antunes, D-12, who is on the board of the authority, said it is a cost-effective way for the city to take care of its recycling and putrescibles.
For residents it is picked up by Public Works personnel, while private haulers who serve businesses in the city, as well as condos and apartment buildings, also must bring it to Middletown Avenue and pay a fee to do so.
Murphy Road Recycling, in its application, said New Haven transfers 80,000 tons of waste yearly to processing plants in Berlin, Bristol, Bridgeport, Lisbon and Preston. It said the city, like
A need for better support other communities, is not selfsufficient in managing its waste, which in Connecticut depends on an “intricate web of interdependent facilities.”
Harp said the company promised to “keep the same high standards” with the transfer of putrescibles.
In her letter of Dec. 13, 2019, she wrote to Antonacci to thank him for abandoning a proposed 38,000-square-foot addition to his facilities, as well as his plan to bring in recycling equipment, as she requested.
“Concerning your plan to accept and process putrescible Municipal Solid Waste, I am comfortable the additional controls that you have agreed to implement will protect the safety, health and welfare of the city and its residents. I therefore do not believe a community benefit is necessary or appropriate,” Harp wrote.
She said she could not recall whether there had been a request from some groups for “community benefits” as a way to mitigate the changes requested by Murphy Road Recycling. In the interview, Harp said it was a small company to take on providing benefits.
On the secretary of the state’s website, Antonacci is listed as principal for Murphy Road Recycling and All American Waste and operates CNG, a compressed natural gas fueling station, all three of which are located on the Wheeler Street property. All American Waste also has locations in Enfield and South Windsor. Those towns show Antonacci as the property owner.
Attorney Meghan Miles, who submitted the company’s application to the City Plan Commission, said she would pass on a request for comment from Antonacci.
There were five public meetings from 2018 to 2019 on the delivery of putrescibles to the site, where the company explained the material would be held in covered trucks, inside a closed building for a maximum of 48 hours before being transferred to other sites in the state for processing.
Several nearby neighbors complained that they have to close their windows because of odors emanating from the area of Murphy Area Recycling.
Elaine Stetzer of 74 Goodwin St., is one of only three houses on the one-block street that intersects with Wheeler Street.
When asked whether she had a problem with foul odors coming from the area where the recycling center is located, she said “Absolutely.”
“On a good day, when the breeze is coming from that way, which it usually is, you can actually smell garbage. It is like opening a garbage can — like a giant garbage can has been opened in your yard,” Stetzer said. She said she does not put her recycling and garbage cans in the back. They could be seen to the side and the front of her one-family home on Monday.
Stetzer, like others, did not know to whom she should complain. She said the odor is not constant. “You can’t really pick out the time. It is like all of a sudden — wow — you happen to go out in the backyard, you get this strong odor of garbage.”
A neighbor across the street, who moved in recently, said, through his daughter, that he has not been bothered by bad odors.
Around the corner, Danielle Pittman, who has lived for two years in an apartment complex on Fulton Street that backs up toward Wheeler, also complained about a smell. She described it as an odor of gasoline. Her neighbor, Marinna Almonde, said there is a lot of noise from trucks and there is a strong odor she notices at night.
The Board of Alders, its Joint City Services and Environmental Policy/Public Safety Committee and the city’s state delegation have opposed the expanded use, while more than 500 people signed a petition in opposition on change.org. The testimony at the hearings raised concerns of truck traffic, noise and odors.
In its application to the city, Murphy Road Recycling said it has never been cited.
Laura Cahn, who heads the Environmental Advisory Council, said she has experienced odors in the vicinity of Murphy Road Recycling. She said there is no clear process for filing a complaint or an indication as to which agency is responsible.
Chris Ozyck, an environmental activist, in his testimony on the proposals, said the nearby neighborhood “is the most environmentally burdened in New Haven . ... Even a modest amount of wet garbage will be difficult to control for future expansion.”
He argued that the city should have “the right to self-determination when it comes to protecting the health of its citizens, the stabilization of property values and the impact to its infrastructure, bridges and sewers.”
He said bringing garbage to the site for transfer elsewhere will mean more traffic, pollution and scavenging birds and rodents.
The company, in its application, said 492 daily trips will be reduced to 416. It said it will aggregate the waste collection from haulers and transfer it on loaders, reducing vehicles on the road.
Robert Isner, director of the Waste Engineering and Enforcement Division of the DEEP, said the permit request from Murphy Road Recycling is going through a technical review. He could not give an indication as to when the agency would make a recommendation.
Stacey Davis, a city planner, said it has not yet received a report from CDM Smith, an engineering and construction company the city hired to write a peer review of the application. She said if they don’t receive it before the commission’s meeting Wednesday, the staff will recommend that the item be tabled.