Towns scramble for trash plan amid contract confusion

Municipal contracts with the state for refuse hauling expire in mid 2027. Before then, Northwest Corner towns must find a solution for municipal solid waste.

The Northwest Hills Council of Governments (NHCOG), a coalition of 21 town governments in the region, has for several years been weighing waste options. The prevailing plan as of February 2025 is to identify a central hub and create a regional waste authority to manage the operation.

To achieve this, NHCOG submitted an offer to purchase the existing Torrington Transfer Station, which has been operating since 1988, from the state agency Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority Dissolution Authority (MIRA-DA).

Currently the Torrington facility processes 25,000 tons per year of waste, recyclables, bulky items, and has a capacity to expand that to 60,000 tons. The 4.7-acre Torrington Transfer Station on Vista Drive is operated by a third-party contractor, Enviro Express Inc. in Bridgeport.

The Torrington site has an unused rail spur that could be used for waste hauling. The projected total cost of operation of the Torrington Transfer Station for Fiscal Year 2026 is $4,736,907 according to the dissolution authority.

Since the Hartford plant closed in July of 2022, MIRA-DA operates just two transfer stations in the state: one in Essex and one in Torrington.

Waste received at the Torrington Transfer Station is consolidated onto transfer trailers then delivered to the Keystone sanitary landfill in Pennsylvania. Recycling is consolidated onto transfer trailers and delivered to privately operated processing facilities in Willimantic or Berlin, where it is sorted, baled, and sold to be made into new consumer products.

Of the 21 towns in the Northwest Corner, 11 still maintain a contract with MIRA-DA. The remainder of the towns have hired private haulers, such as USA Waste and Recycling.

NHCOG members have been operating on the understanding that they have until June 30, 2027, to secure new contracts. It was recently learned that the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) is the successor agency to MIRA-DA effective July 1, 2025. Town representatives were surprised to learn that DAS is not required to honor existing town contracts. The actual contractual expiration date is unclear, which has caused confusion they hope to resolve.

Winchester Mayor and Administrator of the Barkhamsted Transfer Station Todd Arcelaschi said “Forming a regional waste authority is much more complicated than just the NHCOG simply forming one. Once one is formed, it would then be up to all the towns to take steps to join the RWA, it isn’t automatic.” He went on, ”The Torrington Transfer Station has four or five tractor trailers that ship the municipal waste to Pennsylvania, and the Recycling to Automated in Berlin.The NHCOG would likely be operating the same way, hiring a company to run the transfer station. That company would be responsible for the trucking, so the COG would not have to purchase trucks.”

The dissolution authority had 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.Connecticut residents produce 3.5 million tons of municipal solid waste annually, yet the state only has capacity for 2.7 million tons.

Members of the NHCOG spoke at the Jan. 15, 2025, meeting of MIRA-DA in Hartford, who made their minutes public online.

Curtis Rand, Salisbury First Selectman, described the good work done by Sharon and Salisbury in the areas of recycling and composting. He stated that he thought the town had until June 2027 and was stunned when he learned that the contract could end as early as mid 2025. He asked for the dissolution authority’s help in maintaining the Torrington Transfer Station as a public option for the towns.

“It is in the public interest to try to keep some public option for our trash disposal in the Northwest Hills, especially for small towns that generally do not have a lot of staff.”
— Gordon Ridgway, Cornwall First Selectman

Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway stated his belief that “it is in the public interest to try to keep some public option for our trash disposal in the Northwest Hills, especially for small towns that generally do not have a lot of staff.” He echoed Rand’s comments that the towns thought they had two years to work out a solution. He asked for some time and cooperation to work out an equitable solution that ideally is in the public interest.

New Hartford First Selectman Dan Jerram, chairman of NHCOG, noted that “all 21 towns in our council voted in favor of pursuing the Torrington Transfer Station to maintain it as a public option because they thought it was important for the long-term future.”

Goshen First Selectman Todd Carusillo stated, “the towns have been working on transitioning the transfer station to the towns for the last few months, after learning the time frame had been shortened from 2027 to 2025. I am concerned about the potential for one company coming in and creating a monopoly by buying all the transfer stations in the region. This would result in the towns losing control over solid waste tip fees.”

David Barger, first selectman of Falls Village, added, “Transitioning the Torrington Transfer Station to the towns is keeping in line with Governor Lamont’s plan to regionalize services across the state.”

Winsted/Winchester is among the NHCOG towns that has opted to sign with a private hauler rather than wait for a public solution.

Paul Harrington, town manager of Winchester, explained, “While we’re making progress in developing regional waste solutions, we must ensure that any long-term arrangement is both financially sustainable and operationally efficient. Waste collection is an essential weekly service that must continue uninterrupted, but it needs to be delivered in the most cost-effective manner possible, especially given the constraints of municipal budgets.”

Jennifer Heaton Jones, executive director of the Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, a solid waste/recycling authority in Western Connecticut, weighed in, “It is hard to form a regional waste authority. The Northwest Hills geographically are difficult transportation wise; your resources are very different than other parts of the state. So, to create a regional authority to leverage contracts is very different than other regions in Connecticut.”

Heaton-Jones added, “We as a state need to really reconsider how we look at the MSW. We could reduce the amount of waste that we are producing and going to out-of-state landfills. We can consider how we are taking food waste out of the waste stream. Through programs, through better education.”

Food waste represents 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 58% of methane emissions from landfills come from food waste.

In summation, Rand said, “You know, I think there is a hope that we can get the Torrington Transfer Station and work together at least for the next couple of years to fulfill our contract with MIRA till July 2027. There’s a common theme: we would like to preserve some public type of entity to manage our garbage, and that’s pretty simple. We also need to be aware of the amount of waste we are creating, and we need to find ways to make less of it. That’s just a very simple statement.Whether it’s buying less, producing less, recycling more, composting; we’ve got to get this volume of garbage down.”

All recent deliberations by MIRA-DA and by NHCOG have been done in executive session. Selectman Rand predicts definitive results in the next few weeks as to the status of the Torrington Tranfer Station and the formation of a regional waste authority.

The shuttered former waste-to-energy plant in Hartford was responsible for processing approximately one-third of the state’s solid waste by burning it to generate electricity.