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.”
Paquito D’Rivera performs at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on April 5.
Partnerships with organizations like Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires (VIM), the W.E.B. Du Bois Legacy Committee, and Community Access to the Arts (CATA) have helped bridge that gap. But for the Latinx community, there’s an even more targeted effort: the Spanish-language Community Advisory Network (SCAN).
“Six years ago, we started an advisory group of Spanish speakers in the community,” Bernal said. “They tell us what the community wants to see, how they’d like their culture represented. Today, SCAN has 12 members. We meet four times a year and are in constant communication. It’s because of them that we’ve hosted free Spanish-language film screenings and live performances.”
For Bernal, this work is personal. “When I first moved to the U.S. in 2003, it was because I got a Latin American scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music. That first year, I went home to Uruguay for Christmas and saw Paquito D’Rivera perform at a jazz festival. I was determined to meet him, and I did. Later that year, Paquito came to Berklee and invited me on stage.”
Now, two decades and 16 Grammys later, Paquito D’Rivera is coming to the Mahaiwe on April 5, and there’s a chance history might repeat itself. “He saw a post we made about his concert and commented, ‘Ay, chica, que maravilla, are you gonna sing a song with us?’ I almost died,” Bernal laughed. “I don’t know if it will happen, but it would be a dream.”
About the possibility of a guest appearance by Bernal, D’Rivera said, “Natalia is a very dear, valuable colleague, and jazz is about improvisation, so the surprise factor is always part of the fun here.”
D’Rivera’s concert is just one example of how the Mahaiwe is making world-class performances accessible. “My whole day has been about offering ‘pay what you can’ tickets for this show,” Bernal says. “We also issued a 50% discount to our partners. We work with ESL teachers, public libraries, literacy agencies, anyone who can help us get the word out.”
That kind of grassroots effort has been transformative. “Last year, we screened ‘Florencia en el Amazonas,’ the first opera written in Spanish ever performed at the Met,” Bernal said. “I sat in the Mahaiwe in tears. As someone who loves opera, it was the first time I heard one written in my own language. It was so powerful.”
Natalia Bernal, Mahaiwe’s education and community engagement managerPhoto by Martin Cohen
For Bernal, it all comes back to representation, on stage and in the audience. “My son is eight. I bring him to everything I can. Spanish shouldn’t just be something that happens at the dinner table. It should be in the world, in all these shapes and forms.”
And that’s what SCAN is helping build: a future where Latinx voices aren’t just included, they are central. “Our SCAN advisors are volunteers, cultural ambassadors,” Bernal said. “They help us distribute surveys, talk to the audience, and strengthen the community. Nobody should feel alone. Everybody should feel like they belong here.”
Education and outreach are central to D’Rivera’s work as well. He said, “It is an important part of our mission to plant and nurture the seed of quality music in our communities.” He continued to say, “Using our visibility and influence in favor of justice is always a very effective vehicle in denouncing violations of human rights around the world.”
This shared mission of education and social justice extends beyond the Mahaiwe. “We are one of the few arts organizations in a monthly meeting with BASIC (Berkshire Alliance for Immigrant Services). We have direct ties to the Berkshire Immigrant Center, VIM, and others so that we are well-informed and ready to serve,” said Bernal.
That commitment to community, culture, and access is why Bernal’s dream panel—Women in the Music Business—would feature Paquito’s wife and longtime manager, Brenda Feliciano. “She’s a tower of power. She’s been managing his career for at least 45 years. If I could organize an event one day, she would be the cherry on the cake.”
Until then, Bernal will keep doing what she does best: making sure the Mahaiwe is a place where everyone, regardless of language, income, or background, feels at home. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll find herself back on stage with Paquito D’Rivera, just like that first time, all those years ago.
For more info and tickets to Paquito D’Rivera, visit mahaiwe.org
The creative director at Ralph Lauren for almost four decades, Carter began writing this book during the pandemic, a time of rediscovering comfort. “I found more time to appreciate those special things that give our homes warmth and connection.” Working with Ralph Lauren, she learned that the best spaces tell a personal story. “His desk was filled with toy cars, miniature shoes, superheroes, English dandies, cowboys on horseback. The walls? A gallery of his children’s paintings, iconic photos of Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper. Everything told a story.”
Carter acknowledges how homes can become overwhelmed with stuff but sees a difference between clutter and collection. “To live happily, create environments that inspire and comfort rather than encumber you! Look around and ask, ‘What is truly meaningful? What makes you smile? What recalls the people and places you cherish?’” Then, she added, “weed out the rest with discipline and courage!”
Provided
Each home in Carter’s book reflects its inhabitant’s spirit. “The first time I walked into Bethann Hardison’s apartment, I knew right away how authentic it was to who she is.” Hardison’s walls are lined with artwork from friends Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Haitian paintings, testaments to a life well lived. “Though her mantra is, ‘the lighter the load, the freer the journey,’ she also admits some things ‘delight your environment’ and can’t be parted with. Amen to that!”
Having survived two childhood fires, Carter deeply understands what truly matters. “It’s not the things, but the people and memories they evoke.” She loves her collections, but they don’t possess her. “They make me happy, but they do not define me.”
She delights in how people showcase treasures. Paula Grief, for instance, lives in a ten-foot-wide house and had to part with many books. “She tucks the ones she can’t live without through the rungs of her staircase. I love that ingenuity!”
When asked about her most cherished possession, Carter tells a story of loss and serendipity. A childhood portrait of her in a blue velvet dress was lost in a fire. “Years later, the artist’s daughter found another version. Now, it hangs in our apartment, surrounded by flea market art and one of my favorite saints, Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
Adding to the cozy feeling of this book, Carter’s son, Carter Berg, took the photographs, and her sister, Cary, contributed the illustrations. “Cary once stayed in our apartment and painted a dozen objects from our cluttered kitchen. I hung them immediately. When I started this book, I knew she had to capture my favorite objects.”
Four of the featured homes are local to the Northwest Corner, including Carter’s in Millerton, Joan Osofsky’s in Lakeville, Robin Bell’s in Salisbury, and Paula Grief’s in Hudson. They all gathered at the White Hart/Oblong Speaker Series on March 27.
After perusing the richly colored pages of this book, you may feel tempted to shop. “You don’t need money to create a meaningful home,” Carter insisted. “Some of my favorite paintings cost no more than $10 or $25. Value is personal. It’s not about provenance but the story an object tells you or the one you make up.”
Carter’s advice? “Fall in love with the wackiest thing. Surround yourself with what matters, and you’ll live happily ever after.”
