The Barkhamsted-New Hartford Landfill, Regional Refuse Disposal District No. 1 (RRDD1), a 98-acre Superfund site straddling the towns of Barkhamsted and New Hartford has left a toxic trail that continues to require active management
Between 1974 and 1993, the unlined landfill accepted a noxious cocktail of municipal and industrial wastes, including oily metal grindings, sludge, and bulky items. Groundwater contamination was first detected in 1981, setting off alarms about the potential health risks posed by the site.
As of June 2023, Connecticut had 13 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List (NPL) which identifies “the most serious uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites needing long-term remedial action.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), when hazardous commercial and industrial wastes are mismanaged, they pose unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.
In 1980, Congress established the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) which is informally called Superfund. The Superfund program is administered by the EPA in cooperation with state and tribal governments. It allows EPA to clean up hazardous waste sites and forces those responsible to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA cleanups. Nationally, in 2023 there were 1,336 Superfund sites on the NPL.
Jim Hart, former First Selectman of Barkhamsted, was the whistleblower that finally brought attention and action to the developing toxic crisis at the Barkhamsted-New Hartford landfill. Hart said, “When this facility opened in April of 1974, society did not understand the issues associated with getting rid of certain chemical waste. The primary pollutants here were metal grinding waste. At that time in the district there was a significant number of machine shops. When we first opened in the mid 1970s there was a metal grinding waste pool up here. You just dumped into the pool. You know, back then, Harry Homeowner who changed the oil in their car just threw that out in the garbage.”
As a young first selectman, Hart received a complaint of toxic runoff by a neighboring resident in 1981. After 18 months of stonewalling by the RRDD1, Hart decided to go up the food chain.
“I walked the area with the director of Farmington Valley Health. When we crossed the brook, the smell was potent to your nose, and we developed headaches. It was kind of scary.”
In the spring of 1983 Hart wrote a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) commissioner asking for significant investigation. He laughed, “Superfund designation is like having an old musket and you pull the trigger, and it takes so long before the bullet comes out the other end. The EPA moved at a snail’s pace, and it wasn’t until the late 1980s that they did investigation work that required us to install a series of groundwater monitoring wells. When the first results from these monitoring wells became known the crap really hit the fan.”
Jennifer Almquist
The Barkhamsted landfill’s poisonous legacy includes a litany of hazardous substances that have seeped into the surrounding area. Cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, manganese, nickel, zinc, trichloroethylene (TCE), and cis-1,2-dichloroethylene have all been found in the soil, groundwater, and surface water near the site.
The potential threat to local residents continues. TCE and cis-1,2-dichloroethylene contaminated the Barkhamsted town garage’s drinking water well, while antimony, arsenic, and selenium were detected at low levels in three private wells nearby. Site-related metals were found in the soil on two residential properties near the landfill, raising concerns about potential exposure. In this rural and residential area, where all properties rely on on-site drinking water wells, the threat of contamination looms large.
The EPA determined the potentially responsible parties (PRPs). In Barkhamsted-New Hartford there were a dozen machine shops and businesses in the district designated as PRPs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified 78 other PRPs, including corporate giants like Coca-Cola, Cooper Industries, and Eaton Corporation, as well as the towns of Barkhamsted, Colebrook, New Hartford, and Winchester.
The costs of remediation have been high. At least $4.5 million in state Superfund money was spent to cap the landfill in 1999. Responsible parties began groundwater monitoring programs and continue to monitor the drinking water wells close to the site.
According to Winchester Mayor and current administrator of RRDD1, Todd Arcelaschi, “The containment has been successful, except for one time in the middle 2000’s where the cap failed and there was a washout that required several hundred thousand in repairs. The landfill is visually inspected semi-annually now, groundwater and well testing is conducted quarterly.”
After the closure of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) waste to energy (WTE) incinerator in Hartford, Arcelaschi feels the future of waste management in the Northwest corner of Connecticut will depend on what happens with the Northwest Hills Council of Governments’ efforts to form a Regional Waste Authority.
“If they successfully create one, we will still use the former MIRA Torrington Transfer Station, and our trash will likely continue to be shipped out of state, unless the Waste Authority can find available capacity for the region’s municipal solid waste (MSW) at another WTE plant in CT.”
The Superfund landfill is now in use again as the regional transfer station for RRDD1 for the towns of Winchester, New Hartford, and Barkhamsted. Of its 98 acres, approximately 13 acres contains the capped landfill, the second part of the site is currently used as the transfer station and recycling center, and the remaining space is an active solar farm generating 1.5 megawatts of electricity which helps offset recycling transfer operating costs.
"EPA completed a comprehensive review of the site last September, as documented in the Five-Year Review report, and concluded that the completed remedy is still protective of human health and the environment," said Daniel Keefe, U.S. EPA Region 1 Superfund Section Chief. "Several potential issues were identified in the report that require additional monitoring, notably the detection of emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). EPA is working with those responsible for maintaining the site to ensure that continued monitoring is performed."
While there is no evidence that anyone has gotten sick because of the contamination, and the EPA has approved the clean-up efforts, the specter of toxic exposure remains. The legacy of the Barkhamsted-New Hartford landfill Superfund site serves as a reminder of the price communities pay for improper waste disposal.
Gustavo Portillo goes for a header
The game was split into two standard 40-minute halves with a 3-minute pause for "coach's time" in each half. The intermissions were reminiscent of the hydration breaks that soccer spectators became accustomed to during the recent 2026 FIFA World Cup.
HVRHS coach Adolfo Portillo tested out different lineups throughout the game, alternating between a 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 formation. In each third, the Mountaineers' game-tested veterans provided stability and anchored the team.
On defense, seniors Wyatt Bayer and Ryan Segalla locked down the middle lane. Torrington's attacks were stifled before ever becoming threats. Sophomore Ryan Houghtaling started the game in goal for HVRHS.
In the center, senior Gustavo Portillo acted as a vocal on-field coach. The box-to-box midfielder directed his teammates in real time and provided encouraging affirmation for younger players. Portillo scored the first goal of the scrimmage: an unassisted strike from the right side to start the second half.
Up front, senior striker Jackson McAvoy created offensive opportunities through agile cuts and quick bursts of speed. Midway through the second half, a sharp, threaded ball from McAvoy set Peyton Bushnell loose on a fast break that ended in the day’s second goal.
Last season, HVRHS ended as runners up in the Berkshire League tournament. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference ranked the Mountaineers as the 28th best team in the state's Class S boys soccer division in 2026.
The first regular season game for HVRHS was scheduled to be played in Winsted on Tuesday, Sept. 8, against Northwestern Regional High School.
Peyton Bushnell takes a shotRiley Klein
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KK Kozik in her studio
It is a particularly fitting philosophy for an artist whose paintings often begin with the world around her but rarely end there. There might be something recognizable — a stone wall, an apple tree, a crow — but then there is something less certain. Something that appears to be one thing becomes another upon inspection. Memory gets involved. So does imagination. So does time.
Since moving from New York City to Sharon, Connecticut in 2006, the landscape around her has become increasingly important to that process.
“I just saw things differently,” Kozik said.
The change was not immediate. She remembers an earlier version of herself driving through Vermont without paying much attention to what was happening beyond the windshield.
“I didn’t have the means to see what was happening around me,” she said. “I just sort of la, la, la, la, la, driving to Vermont.”
But, she said, she started to pay attention differently.
“I became more sensitized as time went on,” she said.
Asked whether that change came with age, she said, “Age and so-called wisdom.”
There’s a sense of loss in her landscapes, but a particular kind of loss that also has a twinge of redemption. Specifically, what happens to a landscape when people leave it?
“When the people go away, the wildlife comes back,” Kozik said.
KK Kozik in her studio with her painting “Golden Delicious.”Natalia Zukerman
Kozik’s work has never settled into a single recognizable formula. She has painted landscapes, figures and still lifes, moved toward abstraction and returned to representation. Her subjects change, but the underlying impulse remains: to take what is in front of her and discover what else there might be.
Kozik describes herself as someone who is always trying to figure things out. Her paintings often have the feeling of a thought in progress rather than a conclusion. They have been called “single-line novellas,” a description that makes sense: They can contain the suggestion of an entire story without telling you exactly what happened.
The animals are part of that storytelling.
They arrived partly because of what was disappearing.
“They were like the new redemption in a way,” she said.
There is something almost funny about the way Kozik talks about this — not because the loss itself is funny, but because she refuses to turn it into a grand pronouncement. She observes something, considers it, and lets it complicate the work.
That same sensibility comes through when she talks about her own development as an artist. Her paintings make room for interpretation. They don’t always tell the viewer what an animal symbolizes, or why a landscape has been altered, or where a particular image came from. Instead, they leave enough evidence to make you curious and enough room for your own stories.
The effect is not accidental. Kozik has spent years thinking about how images work, both as paintings and as containers for ideas.
Her work is currently included in “The Naturalist,” a group exhibition on view through Sept. 13 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, alongside Richard Klein, Sally Maca, Rick Shaefer and Tricia Wright. The exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with the natural world, including its forms, histories and mysteries.
Kozik is an especially apt fit for the exhibition. She is described by the gallery as a landscape painter, figurative painter and interiors/still-life painter whose work frequently moves toward painterly abstraction. Her practice, the gallery notes, is “fluid and continuous” — always searching for new pictorial problems to solve.
That search has also extended beyond her own studio.
For several years, Kozik ran ICEHOUSE Project Space, an 18th-century icehouse on Sharon’s town green that she transformed into an unusual venue for contemporary art. It opened in 2018 with Dan Devine’s “Inside-Out NASCAR” and went on to host site-specific projects by artists including Mark Dion, Eric Aho, Janet Biggs, Richard Klein, Kristin Jones, Lisa Hoke and Ryan Frank. The projects addressed everything from the decline of winged insects and native and invasive plants to Sharon’s iron industry, its gardens and its history as an ice-producing community.
The space is now closed, but its premise still feels connected to Kozik’s painting practice. Each project responded in some way to the physical location, turning what might otherwise have been a little historic outbuilding into a setting for contemporary art.
Kozik’s own work does something similar with the landscape. She takes a place and lets it become more than a place.
Kozik’s paintings tell us that something happened before we arrived, and that something will happen after we leave.
And then there is the question of what to do with the space in between.
Maybe Kozik’s paintings are less about that space and more about an idea, as she put it, of “which questions to think about.”
Jazzmine Bone and A Stitch in Tyme power through the Gambler’s Choice run during the 2024 Lakeville Open.
The event, which has been held continuously for 69 years, is open to the public with free admission.
Individual competitions will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors can stop by briefly or settle in for the day.
A food truck, bake sale and portable restrooms will be available on-site.
The show is the primary fundraiser for The Lakeville Pony Club, with proceeds supporting young riders who need financial assistance to participate in lessons. Members and their families work throughout the year to create the event for both competitors and spectators.
Members of the Lakeville Pony Club and Echo the pony arrive for the costume class during the Lakeville Open in 2024.Caitlin Von Graf
For those new to horse shows, the day offers a chance to learn more about the sport and understand what happens in the ring. In equitation competitions, judges evaluate the rider’s skill, from beginners learning walk and trot to more advanced riders navigating cantering and jumping courses.
Hunter competitions focus on the horse’s style and smoothness over fences, while jumper classes emphasize accuracy and speed as horses and riders race against the clock without knocking down rails.
The day also includes a crowd favorite: the costume class, where horses and riders dress up in creative ensembles for a chance at the top prize.
Programs will be available onsite to help spectators identify competitors and horses. A full list of competitions, entry information and details for those interested can be found at rigameadow.com
Whether an experienced equestrian or simply curious about the sport, the Lakeville Open Horse Show offers a chance to enjoy a Hudson Valley tradition that continues to bring the community together.
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