The Town of Mansfield received a $129,500 grant for waste management infrastructure from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection last week.
The Materials Management Infrastructure grant program created by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection awarded $15 million dollars in total to nine municipalities, with Mansfield getting one of the smallest grants (only surpassing Greenwich,) according to the DEEP website.
Mansfield applied to the MMI program last November, seeking $130,000 to create an aerated static compost pile at the Mansfield Transfer Station according to Town Council Minutes. Composting is defined by The Handbook of Compost Engineering as “the transformation of raw organic materials into biologically stable, humus-rich substances suitable for growing plants.” The aerated static compost pile transforms organic material by inducing airflow with an electric blower which kills pathogens and weed seeds while avoiding some laborious turning procedures, according to an O2 Compost article.
Mansfield Recycling Coordinator Virginia Walton announced price raises for waste services during the same meeting that approved the grant application.
“Commercial fee increases are necessary as the solid waste fund has seen an increase in rates being charged to the town,” said the Town Council Minutes.
The MMI program was created in response to what DEEP says is a waste crisis facing the state on the grant’s announcement page. The amount of municipal solid waste (trash) that is exported out of the state contributes to this crisis and is part of the price increase according to The Hartford Courant.
Not everyone agreed with DEEP classifying Connecticut’s waste issues as crisis level. President and CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Association Michael E. Hoffman criticized the state agency using the word “crisis,” despite supporting the project, according to Waste Today Magazine.
“We are concerned with the use of ‘disposal crisis’ to characterize the current situation in Connecticut. Municipal Solid Waste is not piling up. In fact, the Connecticut recycling rate at nearly 28 percent is best-in-class in the U.S.,” said Hoffman to Waste Today Magazine.
Environmental Services Manager of Manchester Scott Atkin defended DEEP negatively characterizing Connecticut’s waste infrastructure in an interview with The Daily Campus.
“Yes, there’s a crisis in Connecticut. It was a couple years in the coming,” Atkin said during an interview this Monday. He referred to the past three years as a particular instigator for waste problems after the closure of Hartford’s trash-to-energy plant called the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA).
In an information session for the grant, DEEP estimated that an annual 860,000 tons of trash gets sent from Connecticut to other states annually. The reasons for this high rate were listed on the project’s website as the decreasing amount of waste disposal locations across the state and the surmounting repairs required for aging infrastructure.
Recent increases behind Connecticut’s waste exportation rates weren’t unforeseen. Thomas Kirk, the former president and CEO of MIRA, predicted that closing the plant could have these consequences.
“It means that hundreds of thousands of tons of Connecticut waste will be shipped to landfills in other states,” said Kirk to The Connecticut Mirror in 2022. While exporting Connecticut waste to other landfills isn’t an ideal solution, continuing to run MIRA came at an unjust burden to Hartford according to the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance.
“Hartford residents have inhaled air polluted by toxic smoke from burning garbage. The South End’s riverfront has been inaccessible. Following decades of garbage management, 80 acres have been left a brownfield – unsafe and unfit for human habitation,” said GHIAA member Debra Cantor in The Hartford Courant.
The MMI program responds to the exportation issues arising from MIRA’s closure with the largest investment in local and regional waste management infrastructure in state history according to the project’s website. Funding projects that divert recyclable and compostable material from disposal in the MMI program improves local waste management which Connecticut needs to begin handling its own garbage again, according to CT Insider.
The town of Manchester got the largest MMI award in the state with $4,775,000 according to the grant’s webpage. Even though this was the most substantial grant, three of the nine different initiatives got denied funding. The proposals without funding included polystyrene collection processing, new recycling equipment and the purchase of property to separate highway infrastructure according to Scott Atkin.
Despite these setbacks, the spirits remained high when Manchester received the grant. “We were pretty happy based on everything we knew about other applicants,” said Atkin in the interview. Assistant Town Manager of Mansfield Kasia Purciello mentioned the role that Manchester residents have in the next steps for the MMI program during the interview.
“This is a big issue, and we’re all part of the solution with this,” she said Monday.
“Wish-cycling” was one example mentioned in the interview were residents unknowingly hinder trash sorting efforts. Leaving plastic bags in the recycle bin based on hope it can be reused damages important components to recycling plants and ultimately costs money in repairs.
“All of us who work in town roles with this [waste management], we try to spread the correct information about recycling,” Purciello said in the interview.
Pre-existing struggles around handling Connecticut’s waste can be seen through the number of applicants for the MMI grant. Competition was fierce with 20 requests doubling the $15 million DEEP allocated for the program according to the grant’s technical assistance forum.