Salisbury, Sharon to pursue waste management grant

The Salisbury/Sharon Transfer Station is moving forward on a grant application to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to improve its municipal waste management systems.

The funding would be used to increase composting services and may involve a transition to a unit-based pricing model, also known as “pay as you throw,” at the Transfer Station in an effort to reduce MSW from the waste stream.

The Sustainable Materials Management grant is in its second round of allocations, with applications due June 27. The towns have opted to work with waste management consulting outfit WasteZero in the development of the application, a choice Sharon First Selectman Casey Flanagan is confident with.

“These people seem to have mastered this,” he said, noting that the firm helped 15 municipalities receive funding in the first-round allocations for the grant.

Both towns’ Boards of Selectmen recently voted to move forward with the plan.

If the application is successful, WasteZero will facilitate discussions among residents as to next steps, as well as assist in the planning and roll-out of new strategies and programs for the town to implement.

In a conversation June 5, Transfer Station Manager Brian Bartram said last year about 450 households participated in the composting program and roughly 40 tons of food scraps were diverted from the waste stream. He said one goal is to expand the program to include businesses.

At present, Salisbury/Sharon pays a driver to haul food scraps to New Milford for composting, which is later brought back as compost. And it’s expensive.

“It costs us more money to compost than it does to throw it out as garbage,” said Bartram.

By expanding to commercial composting and switching to unit-based pricing, which are both intended to divert more food scrap out of the waste stream, the towns would be able to reduce the expense.

“If we can get that food out of there, now we can have a large enough stream of food scraps that we would be able to get it most likely over to McEnroe’s at a much more reasonable cost,” said Bartram.

McEnroe Organic Farm Soils & Compost is located just over the border in Millerton, New York.

One possible use of the grant could be to buy a truck so the towns can stop contracting with a driver and the crew can haul it to Millerton themselves.

Bartram said the details of the grant request are yet to be decided and he will work with WasteZero on the application. He said, “I’ll be happy to tell you more on June 28,” after the application is done.