Government

Selectmen Approve New Policy at Dump: Up to 300 Pounds of ‘Bulky Waste’ Free, Limit One Visit Per Day

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Conceding that a change to the way residents are charged when bringing construction debris and brush to the dump didn’t work out, officials last week revised the policy again. Following the Board of Selectmen’s decision, New Canaanites now can bring up to 300 pounds of such waste to the Transfer Station for free though they can only come once per day under those terms—a new stipulation. “The [Transfer] Station managers are well-informed and they know who is coming in and who isn’t,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann told the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting, held July 21 via videoconference. 

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted in favor of the change. 

The new fee structure replaces a problematic and short-lived policy at the dump—part of a wide reassessment of municipal fees that Moynihan had called for—that had residents paying a fee for all the “bulky waste” they brought to the Lakeview Avenue facility. 

“We kind of bought [into] this idea in budget season and it probably wasn’t the greatest idea,” Moynihan said. Mann said the difficulty with the abandoned policy, which had taken effect July 1, was “that we are getting a substantial amount of traffic into the station for lower charges, meaning 50-cent charges.”

“There is a 10-pound limit on the scale so the first 10 pounds is read by the scale so it’s at 10-ton increments, so 10 pounds and at our rate, 5 cents per pound ,turns out to be a 50-cent fee for the first 10 pounds,” Mann said. 

“We feel that that is a little excessive,” Mann added. “It’s driving too much traffic into the station and causing some backups so we felt that we should go and revise the poundage to the first 100 pounds for free but then limit the number of times a resident could come into the station to one time a day.”

The new fee structure effectively keeps the longtime policy but limits “free-up-to-300-pound” visits to one per day.

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PHOTOS: Car Crashes through Rail, into Dumpster at Transfer Station [UPDATED]

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[Note: This article has been updated with new information from New Canaan Police.]

A motorist on Wednesday afternoon crashed through a rail at the Transfer Station, plunging a vehicle headfirst into a garbage dumpster several feet below. No one was injured in the crash at the Lakeview Avenue facility, according to New Canaan Police Lt. Jason Ferraro, the department’s public information officer. Police, fire and EMTs rushed to the Transfer Station at about 12:18 p.m. on a report of the accident. 

There, two individuals could be seen in the front seats of a gray Chevrolet Caprice Classic whose front end was nosed at about a 45-degree angle into a partially filled dumpster that’s used for residents to drop off their household garbage. 

“Initial reports indicate that the operator mistakenly pushed the accelerator rather than the brake and his vehicle drove over the curbing and sidewalk through the fence at the top of the transfer station platform,” Ferraro said in an email “As a result the vehicle’s front end fell into the container that is used to collect garbage.” Several members of New Canaan Police, Fire and Emergency Medical Services cordoned off the area while firefighters secured the vehicle and worked to extract its two occupants safely. The crash remains under investigation, Ferraro said.

Around Town

Town: Some Still Taking Mulch from Lapham Road

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Though New Canaan last year relocated the town’s mulch pile from Lapham Road to the Transfer Station (to prevent contractors from hauling off with the valuable material), some residents are still ducking into the original site to take pails of it home, officials say. There haven’t been any complaints about the practice and it hasn’t gotten out of hand—likely because it’s physically very demanding, said Tiger Mann, assistant director of the Department of Public Works. “They’re carrying trashcans full of compost in and out because there’s a gate, and that gets old after a while, so you can imagine they’re not carrying much,” Mann said. “It’s a 5-gallon pail kind of thing, no big deal.”

The town carts mulch from Lapham up to the Lakeview Avenue facility—where officials can ensure that only New Canaanites are getting at it—and the change has worked out well. Contractors are no longer taking it.