There will be a reckoning in 2022 about our trash

As 2021 drew to a close, two towns —Falls Village and Sharon — still had not committed to the state Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority’s (MIRA) five-year plan to ship municipal solid waste out of state for disposal.

MIRA Chair Don Stein said in a Nov. 1 interview with The Lakeville Journal that addressing Connecticut’s solid waste management will require action from both the executive and legislative branches of the state government.

MIRA President Tom Kirk said in the same Nov. 1 interview that the immediate problem is that the trash-to-energy facility in Hartford (where Northwest Corner towns send their trash) is going to close on July 1, 2022. The Hartford facility serves 49 towns. It burns municipal solid waste and converts it into electricity.

The facility is outdated, and in 2020 the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) rejected a proposal to spend $330 million to redevelop it.

Which means for the short term the garbage will be shipped out of state.

This in turn means significantly higher fees for participating municipalities. Kirk said Connecticut is already shipping some 400,000 tons of waste out of state now. The Hartford material will add another 500,000 tons.

Nobody is happy about this. Kirk said “dumping in poor rural communities” in other states will almost certainly cause environmental problems in the future.

There are four similar trash-to-energy plants in the state, but they are all at capacity, Kirk said.

Stein said that DEEP’s focus is on longterm initiatives, but “none of these things are mandated by the Legislature.”

He said he doesn’t anticipate any significant change in the situation in the short term.

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LAKEVILLE — Father Joseph G. M. Kurnath, retired priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, passed away peacefully, at the age of 71, on Sunday, June 29, 2025.

Father Joe was born on May 21, 1954, in Waterbury, Connecticut. He attended kindergarten through high school in Bristol.

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Siglio Press: Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature

Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.

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Siglio Press is a small, independent publishing house based in Egremont, Massachusetts, known for producing “uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.” Founded and run by editor and publisher Lisa Pearson, Siglio has, since 2008, designed books that challenge conventions of both form and content.

A visit to Pearson’s airy studio suggests uncommon work, to be sure. Each of four very large tables were covered with what looked to be thousands of miniature squares of inkjet-printed, kaleidoscopically colored pieces of paper. Another table was covered with dozens of book/illustration-size, abstracted images of deer, made up of colored dots. For the enchanted and the mystified, Pearson kindly explained that these pieces were to be collaged together as artworks by the artist Richard Kraft (a frequent contributor to the Siglio Press and Pearson’s husband). The works would be accompanied by writings by two poets, Elizabeth Zuba and Monica Torre, in an as-yet-to-be-named book, inspired by a found copy of a worn French children’s book from the 1930s called “Robin de Bois” (Robin Hood).

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For those lucky enough to already possess their own bike, perhaps the routes described will inspire a new way to spend a Sunday afternoon. For more, visit lakevillejournal.com/tag/bike-route to check out two ride-guides from local cyclists that will appeal to enthusiasts of many levels looking for a varied trip through the region’s stunning summer scenery.

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