HARTFORD — When Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed House Bill (HB) 6664 on June 29, 2023, effectively closing the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) Hartford facility, it was the end of an era.
Since 1988, the MIRA plant had been used as a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant incinerating garbage from the region, including the Northwest Corner, and producing electricity at a rate of 400,000 megawatts per hour. One third of all Connecticut’s trash was processed there.
The eighty-acre South Meadows site located on the shore of the Connecticut River just south of Hartford originally served 70 Connecticut towns.
At present there are no landfills in Connecticut and only five other incinerators (in Bristol, Preston, Plainfield, Bridgeport, and Lisbon). As a result, 860,000 tons of garbage is now being shipped three hours west to the Keystone Sanitary landfill in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, and taken by railroad to Tunnel Hill Reclamation Landfill in Lexington, Ohio.
According to Housatonic Regional Resources Recovery (HRRA) Executive Director Jennifer Heaton-Jones, Connecticut residents produce 3.5 million tons of municipal solid waste annually, yet the state only has capacity for 2.7 million tons. Heaton-Jones said it takes 125,000 trucks to move our 3.5 million tons of waste to existing facilities and 29,000 more trucks to move the rest out-of-state.
MIRA was replaced by MIRA Dissolution Authority (MDA), which has been tasked with shutting down the facility, selling the operable heavy equipment, selling scrap metal, and cleaning up the site. MDA is obligated by Public Act 23-170 to “continue to operate the authority’s transfer stations until acceptable alternatives, operated by entities other than the authority, become available, as determined by the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection.”
US Senator Richard Blumenthal revealed his concern and grasp of the looming crisis. “The closure of the MIRA facility in Hartford has brought more attention to a longstanding issue facing Connecticut, its towns and residents – how to better address our solid waste crisis. State and local governments, along with environmental advocates, have been discussing various initiatives including increased recycling, food waste diversion and reducing municipal solid waste. Initiatives such as establishing anaerobic digesters to process food waste have already received federal funding with my support. I will continue to collaborate with state and local officials, advocates and businesses to provide federal support for their initiatives.”
The story of the MIRA facility began on December 19, 1921, when the Hartford Electric Light Company (HELCO) fired up their South Meadows Station. The $5 million facility was “seen as a marvel of efficiency,” according to the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority (CRRA). Equipped with coal conveyors and automatic stokers, the plant burned 250 tons of coal daily. In 1928, the first commercial mercury cycle generating units in the world opened at the South Meadows Station. Despite its thermodynamic efficiency, once mercury’s health risks were known it was discontinued.
The South Meadows Station was converted to petroleum fuels by the 1940s and, in 1978, the “Mid-Connecticut Project” was proposed as a $150 million garbage-burning plant to resolve the region’s solid waste disposal problems. Four dual turbine Pratt & Whitney backup generators provided emergency power to the switch yards in the event the main boilers went offline, like during the Northeast Blackout of 1965. For every 800,000 tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), 16,000 tons of ferrous metal was recovered for recycling. The Regional Recycling Center (RRC) also received 80,000 tons per year of cardboard, paper, newspaper, plastic, and soda cans.
Jennifer Almquist
In 2001, the site was purchased by the CRRA, which required prior environmental contamination be remediated. There were 45 areas of concern identified through thousands of soil samples taken.
The South Meadows site went through 12 years of active remediation work at a cost of $28 million, including removal of 60,000 tons of impacted soil, pumping and treatment of ground water, installation of engineered controls, imposition of deed restrictions and environmental land use restrictions. Eversource, which has an easement for its massive transformers on site, uncovered some deep pocket of theretofore unknown historical contamination, which halted the remediation process.
In 2020 MIRA asked the state for $330 million to restore the South Meadows but they were turned down by Katie Dykes, Commissioner of DEEP, who chastised MIRA for presenting a “false choice, and a bad deal for taxpayers across the state, Hartford residents, and the environment. I expect more from MIRA as a public sector trash authority. Today, I asked that the MIRA board deliver to the state a real plan, fully exploring all the options. MIRA was envisioned to be a partner for the state in implementing sound policy on waste, recycling, and the environment.”
Governor Lamont was also not a fan of the MIRA remediation proposal. He said, “I cannot support sending hundreds of millions of state taxpayer or electric ratepayer dollars to MIRA to attempt to keep a failing decades-old facility running, right here in Hartford where it impacts our vulnerable residents. A permanent trash export operation is also a nonstarter. It’s time for new ideas.”
Tom Kirk, President of MIRA at that time, expressed his disappointment. “Regrettably, the operations plan portends planning for a regressive initiative to commence large scale transport to and landfilling at distant out-of-state landfills. MIRA is disappointed in the collective failure of Connecticut’s policymakers to mobilize to prevent this environmental and public service tragedy.”
At a meeting Tuesday, May 14, the MDA Board, which is headed by Lamont appointee Bert Hunter, Chief Investment Officer of Connecticut Green Bank, voted to retain the $56 million remaining in their coffers to use towards remediation of the site, which is essentially a brownfield.
MDA approved a $629,500 contract with Weston and Sampson Engineers to conduct the South Meadows Redevelopment Considerations Study, to determine the environmental impacts of future use and identify hazards such as lead in the thermal systems, pipes, insulation, paint, flange gaskets, valve packing, pipe dope, and plaster surfacing materials. In the current location, there are mercury vapor light tubes, high pressure sodium lamps, and mercury switches. The coal ash pond may contain heavy metals, including arsenic, mercury, cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, and selenium.
The existing level of toxins may delay tearing down the massive brick, cement, and steel structures. It will be difficult to dispose of the toxic rubble. Despite the site contamination, a turtle was sunning on a rock in the pond, grey herons posed, eagles were nesting in nearby trees, and a coyote ran through the empty plant.
The cost to perform this work is estimated and funded at $3.3 million. All MSW delivered to the plant was processed into refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and combusted to produce electricity. The last load of MSW was delivered to the plant on July 11, 2022; the last boiler was shut down on July 19, 2022, and all the RDF was consumed.
Engineer Chris Shepard has worked at this facility for 23 years.Jennifer Almquist
Chris Shepard, the environmental compliance manager, worked for 23 years as an engineer at the plant. May 14 he conducted a tour of the mothballed facility. There is a scale model of the entire plant in the control room. After seeing it in miniature, the scale of the building is staggering. There are vestigial parts of the original coal burning facility, vintage control boards, security cameras, some defunct, some still running, in the old control room.
Shepard explained in detail the inner workings of each massive storage tank, conveyor belt, turbine, and exhaust tubing. Climbing an open metal staircase, the world dropped away to the Connecticut River serenely moving by. There is an intricate flood barrier and moat to prevent pollution seeping into the river. People were fishing and sunbathing by the riverside just west of the plant. One hundred people worked at the facility and only ten remain.
Engineer Shepard, mused, “The South Meadow Station site has been re-purposed numerous times over the last 100 years in response to changes in the infrastructure needs of the City of Hartford and the region. We are starting another one of those cycles as we undertake our South Meadows Redevelopment Considerations Study to best-inform future decisions regarding site redevelopment.”
David M. Bodendorf, manager of engineering, construction and power assets at MDA recalled, “One of the biggest projects I worked on in my 23 years with the authority was the closure and capping of the landfill in the north end of Hartford. The project transformed the landfill from something of an unsightly nuisance, into a picturesque open space that is home to a solar energy facility. I would love the opportunity to assist in transforming the site of the former Waste to Energy facility in the City’s south end into something beneficial to the city.”
Recently, MDA staff met with the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance to discuss the history of the South Meadows site, remediation of the site, and its future use. To Sandy Wood of the Alliance, the South Meadows plant was a “prime example of environmental racism,” by sending the garbage of mostly white towns in the Northwest corner to be burned near neighborhoods of color.
The Alliance was pleased that the MDA board voted to use their remaining funds to remediate the land. The Hartford City Council appointed five members to the board of MDA. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said, “We will make sure in the City of Hartford that these funds that are meant to clean up the City of Hartford are used to do just that, to restore the wrongs of the past, to be able to restore back this land, and to be able to build on this beautiful Connecticut River a space that is worthy of the residents of this neighborhood.” MIRA Dissolution Authority board member, CT State Senator John Fonfara (who represents Hartford and Wethersfield) said, “Hartford has accepted the waste, the garbage, from most towns in the state of Connecticut for over 40 years in terms of the trash energy plant, where trucks have pounded on our streets, have sat idling for I don’t know how long before they go into to dispose of the waste. Emissions from that plant are adjacent to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Latino, African American dominant populations. We have done our bit. We’ve paid the price.”
The dissolution of MIRA has had a significant impact on the Northwest corner of Connecticut, especially the towns of Canaan, Colebrook, Cornwall, Goshen, Norfolk, Winsted, Salisbury, North Canaan, Barkhamsted, New Hartford, and Sharon. The Northwest Hills Council of Governments (NHCOG) has until June 30, 2027, to come up with a Municipal Service Agreement (MSA) to either secure alternative waste management services or transition to a regional waste authority like the MIRA Torrington transfer station. MDA has agreed to keep the tipping fee (a fee paid by those who dispose of waste in a landfill, based on the weight of the disposed waste) at $131 per ton until 2027. After that, the towns are on their own to find a place to send their trash. Dan Jerram, First Selectman of New Hartford, and the new head of NHCOG, hopes the area towns will organize by taking over the management of a regional facility such as the existing MIRA Torrington Transfer station. Litchfield has already opted out of its connection to MIRA and hired outside haulers to do their curbside pick-up. After completing its tasks, the MIRA Dissolution Authority will no longer exist.
Todd Arcelaschi worked at MIRA for years. He is now the Mayor of Winchester, and Administrator of Regional Refuse Disposal #1 (RRDD#1) which serves New Hartford, Winchester, and Barkhamsted. He weighed in, “Trash is never going to stop, and most people don’t care about their trash as long as it gets picked up off their curb every week, but they should care. Shipping trash to a landfill is not the answer. We’ve learned here that the things we do today can later cause harm. We need to find an economically and environmentally friendly way to dispose of trash. In my opinion we should be burning trash and creating energy to help power electric cars and the electric grid, as we don’t produce enough energy now.”
Mark T. Daley, current President and CFO of the MIRA Dissolution Authority was reassuring. “The communities in the Northwest corner of the State should know that the Authority is committed to working closely with them to ensure both a smooth transition to local control of our Torrington Transfer Station and uninterrupted waste management services through the June 30, 2027, expiration of our Municipal Services Agreements. They should also understand that the proper closure and potential future use assessment of the Hartford Resource Recovery Facility, through which their waste has historically been processed, is being appropriately addressed.”
The Veteran’s Memorial is set to receive a new plaque commemorating Kent’s 44 known Revolutionary War servicemen. The stone will be displayed throughout the weekend’s USA 250 celebrations.
Friday, July 3
The parade is still set to kick off at Town Hall on Friday, July 3, at 7 p.m. It will finish with a reception at the Kent Volunteer Fire Department with a DJ, dancing and signing of the town’s ceremonial Declaration of Independence.
A planned bonfire has been replaced by the “KVFD Mega Soaker,” courtesy of a Kent Volunteer Fire Department truck, and cold refreshments in the vein of watermelon or popsicles will take the place of smores, which are being saved for a later event. First Selectman Eric Epstein, who is also a volunteer firefighter, said to get ready to get wet: “it’s more than a mister… it’s a soaker.”
Town Clerk and USA 250 Subcommittee member Darlene Brady warned parents to bring towels.
The group will also be providing vehicles and floats so parade participants can hitch a ride than walk through the heat, though they may still walk if they choose.
As of Thursday afternoon, 16 floats had registered, and anyone eager to join can still submit a last-minute request for a holiday-themed float.
Saturday, July 4
All of Saturday’s programming has been moved indoors, save for the raising of the flag which will occur just outside the Community House at noon. The reading of the Declaration, the nationwide bell ringing, and community picnic with concessions and local vendors and activities will take place inside the building until 3 p.m.
Fireworks at Lake Waramaug at dusk are still on schedule for 9:30 p.m., with parking for Kent residents at the shoreside Lake Waramaug State Park.
Widely scattered showers and thunderstorms are possible both days. Brady said that Friday’s parade may still go on in light rain, but that it may have to be halted if safety becomes a concern, as in the event of downpours or lightning.
“We’re hoping mother nature loves a parade!” she said.
Friday, July 3 (Lights & Liberty Community Kickoff):
2 p.m. – community bell ringing at 2 p.m. at the Eric Sloane Museum, 31 Kent Cornwall Road
7 p.m. – Lights and Liberty parade kicks off at Town Hall, ending at the KVFD firehouse for a reception with a DJ, dancing and refreshments
Saturday, July 4 (Celebration on the Town Hall Lawn & Fireworks Finale):
Noon – community signing of town Declaration and flag raising outside the Community House, 93 North Main Street
1 p.m. – Public reading of the Declaration of Independence inside the Community House
2 p.m. – Town-and-nationwide bell ringing
Noon to 3 p.m. – Community picnic, activity tents family programming and food and drink
9 p.m. to end – Rim-the-Lake with Flares followed by fireworks display
A brand new Revolutionary War Memorial featuring 44 known Kent veterans of the fight for independence will be displayed during Friday night's parade and at the flag raising ceremony outside the Community House on the Fourth of July. Alec Linden
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Church’s status as an early environmentalist was mentioned repeatedly during the conversation. Shin’s sculpture “Fallen,” which graced the lawn next to the estate’s main house during last year’s event, featured a fallen hemlock tree trunk planted by Church over 150 years earlier which had been wrapped in tanned leather. She described the work as a direct reference to Church’s experience witnessing the eradication of the area’s hemlocks as the leather tanning industry wreaked havoc on the natural environment of the Hudson Valley in the mid-19th century.
The relationship between art and the environment wasn’t isolated at Church’s former home. Instead, it seemed to be found all over UAW.
Now in its seventh year, UAW works to take the art world out of the city. At its best, the weekend gives artists and curators the opportunity to interact with unfamiliar environments. Just as often, however, it serves as a literal escape, allowing New York City galleries to bring works to pop-up spaces assembled for the express purpose of displaying fine art. The “Loading…” group show in Hudson did just this.
Transplanting six New York City galleries into an intimate event space, “Loading…” featured a wide variety of artists from around the globe. Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, an Indigenous artist from Venezuela, takes ancient practices and translates his observations of the Amazon into minimalist works. Michael Assif’s “Plant a Weed” highlights the human impact on a natural landscape while feeling like a marshmallow dream. And Margaret Curtis’ “ ‘S ” uses the backdrop of a Hudson River School-style sunset to highlight the chaos of today’s state of the American dream.
The flip side of this art-world field trip is the variety of makeshift galleries in the garages and barns of the Hudson Valley. Places like Ugly Mud Studios and Ten Barn Farm, both in Ghent, along with Foxtrot Farm and Flowers in Stanfordville, housed unexpectedly refined exhibitions. These venues all integrate sustainable practices into their business: Foxtrot is a regenerative flower farm, Ugly Mud uses locally sourced clay, and Ten Barn Farm operates a farm-to-table restaurant called The Kitchen.
But at the end of the day, UAW is about getting the art world into the wild. So it was no surprise to see a panoply of eye-catching outfits, and out-of-this-world works at Art Omi, the sculpture and architecture park in Ghent, on Saturday evening. Complete with avant-garde ambient operatic metal, the Summer Kickoff event served as a testament to the continued growth of UAW. It seems the seeds that Toomer and her collaborators planted seven years ago are flourishing, with no signs of slowing down.
Andrew Ingall
Artist Christy Gast with her sculptures at Friday Arts in Amenia.
Benjamin Reynaert
His career began at Martha Stewart Living. A contributor to Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, House Beautiful and Veranda, Reynaert has also served as style director at Domino. He has worked with Farrow & Ball, Chairish, Neiman Marcus, Sunbrella, Anthropologie, Gap, Bunny Williams Home and Stella Artois. He shares his work on Instagram via @aspoonfulofbenjamin.
“I’ve been fortunate to travel the country and abroad for Elle Decor, covering design fairs and trade shows like Deco Off in Paris, London Design Week in England, Cersaie Tile Show in Bologna, Italy, High Point in North Carolina and the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas,” he said. He is drawn to unique objects and textiles. “As a market editor, the pieces that stick with me are not the newest. They are the ones I stumble upon and imagine living with.”
Reynaert is also co-founder of Ticking Tent with Christina Juarez, president of Christina Juarez & Company. The biannual event has become a destination for collectors and designers seeking curated antiques and design objects.
“I met Ben about 15 years ago when he was a young design editor and I was early into my career as a design communications strategist having switched gears from the fashion world," Juarez said. “We immediately clicked. I was impressed by his multidisciplinary creative talents — styling, writing, vision and impeccable eye — and his passion for the thrill of the hunt. I could not ask for a better partner and friend — my brother from another mother — and a yin to my yang. Two creatively minded people with a love of old and new beautiful things, and the ability to curate what the luxury shopper doesn’t know they need and most definitely wants.”
Reynaert described the most recent Ticking Tent as the largest yet. “We hosted over 2,000 guests and transacted our most sales to date with 75 vendors,” he said. “The most exciting part is seeing friends and watching new connections being made. I’m excited for the next event, Nov. 13–14, in Bedford, N.Y.”
Butter Wakefield’s kitchen from“The Layered Home” by Benjamin Reynaert.Manuel Rodriguez
For Reynaert, objects are defined as much by narrative as by design. “An object is about the story — whether it’s passed down in your family, something you worked hard for, bought on a trip, or a friend gave you,” he said. “With that added narrative, it doesn’t need to be the most aesthetically pleasing thing. The memory attached makes it beautiful. I like the idea of simple, seemingly insignificant items having a ton of meaning. Treat a thrift store painting as you would a Picasso.”
Greg Domres and Peter Nichols’ residence in Litchfield, which they share with their miniature schnauzer, Bunny, is one of 15 homes featured in Reynaert’s book, “The Layered Home.” The couple hosted a book signing at George Home in Washington Depot. “I first met Ben at press events during my time at John Derian,” Domres said. “We became friends and stayed connected professionally over the years.”
The book spans interiors from Eric Goujou’s shop The Wolf Tile in Paris’ 5th arrondissement to textile designer Schuyler Samperton’s Litchfield farmhouse. “Sharing the stories of talented, stylish people I’ve met during my tenure in magazines has been a privilege,” Reynaert said. “The most inspiring interiors are layered — with personality, patina and the poetry of a life lived. This book is my love letter to that idea.”
Reynaert said he would like to travel to Japan and Australia and hopes to develop his own product line in the future. “Balancing work and life is a challenge,” he said. He spends downtime with his husband, Luis Illades, in Delaware, where they are renovating a Victorian home.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to blend my work and my life in the home I share,” he said. “Creating a home is, at its core, an act of love.”
Mickalene Thomas and Delano Dunn at Wassaic Project.
Thomas, an artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, collage and installation, first met Dunn when she was his graduate adviser at the School of Visual Arts. “I think your work needs to be out there more,” she said, noting the urgency of this collection in the current socio-political moment.
Dunn’s layered collages often begin with an image unearthed from flea markets, used bookstores and forgotten archives.
“I go to secondhand shops, old bookstores, any place that looks like it has history in it,” he said.
Sometimes, he explained, an image becomes the centerpiece of a work. Other times it simply sparks an idea.
“There’ll be an idea that pops into my head. I’ll read something or hear music or a lyric, and then I’ll think, ‘I’ve got to find an image that matches that.’”
His color palette also carries its own history.
“I grew up in L.A. during the L.A. riots,” Dunn said. “I would sit on my porch as a kid. I was watching the neighborhood burn, but the sky was beautiful.”
He still paints with those saturated blues, reds and oranges.
“Color can transport you. Color can make you feel safe, or happy or scared,” he said. “Those colors made me feel safe.”
For Dunn, Troutbeck’s own layered history became an active part of the work. Learning that the estate had hosted W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Ida B. Wells and generations of civil rights leaders informed his direction.
Dunn was given access to Troutbeck’s archives and found handwritten notes by Langston Hughes, and writings by Du Bois and Wells that found their way into the exhibition.
“There was a letter between Amy Spingarn and Martin Luther King Jr.,” Dunn recalled. “To be in its presence and hold it... you don’t see communication like that every day.”
Delano Dunn’s “Echoes in the Margin” at Troutbeck.Natalia Zukerman
Much of Dunn’s work invites viewers to dig deeper into history rather than accept simplified narratives.
“I want them to look at it and go, ‘Wow, this is really amazing and interesting and colorful and beautiful,’” he said. “And then I want them to be terrified shortly after that.” He accomplishes this through bold, colorful, and often playful compositions that draw the viewer in before revealing their more complex historical underpinnings. As Thomas wrote, “Dunn’s compositions invite viewers to sit within that tension and take it in.” That impulse toward deeper investigation extends to Dunn’s own children, who are often his first audience.
“They’ll ask, ‘What is this? Why does this person look the way they look? Why are you using that color? Why are you using glitter?’”
Those conversations, he said, become lessons in looking beyond appearances.
Thomas framed collage itself as a kind of storytelling practice —“the gathering of information… piecing things together”—and praised Dunn’s ability to translate research, memory and visual pleasure into a unified language. She also underscored the importance of creative joy in the process. “If you’re going to your studio and you’re not having fun,” she said, “you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Dunn said one of the biggest misconceptions he hopes to challenge is the idea that there is a monolithic Black experience.
“There are so many different perspectives out there. This is just one of them,” he said. In the same breath, Dunn said he adopts the label “Black artist” because “it would make my Grandpa proud.”
The nearly two-hour conversation shifted seamlessly between humor and history, studio practice and social commentary, ultimately returning to what both artists believe art can accomplish: encouraging curiosity, complicating familiar stories and inviting viewers to question what they see.
As Dunn put it, “History is so much more nuanced than what we’re taught. There’s so much more going on below the surface.”
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