NEWFANE — In a somewhat heated discussion, the Selectboard and the Recycling Committee recently tried to figure out what to do about recycling after June 30.
Newfane, like most towns in Windham County, currently has roll-off recycling bins available for anyone to use. Workers from the Windham Solid Waste Management District, a chartered municipality owned by 20 member-towns across the county, periodically bring the contents to their Materials Recovery Facility on Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro.
But, with the District closing that facility at the end of the month, they will no longer empty the bins.
Towns without a transfer station will either have to contract with a private hauler to pick up the recyclables, or they will have to do away with municipal recycling altogether and remove the bins.
The challenge for many town officials is that the District Board of Supervisors voted in December to close the Materials Recovery Facility - long after Selectboards, including Newfane's, set their Fiscal Year 2018 budgets, which cover expenditures between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018.
At this year's Town Meeting, Newfane voters passed a nonbinding resolution asking the town to continue offering municipal recycling. The Selectboard charged the Recycling Committee with researching all possible solutions for doing so.
At the June 5 regular Selectboard meeting, Recycling Committee member Johanna Gardner expressed the stalemate her committee faces: With no budget, what can really be done?
Gardner said she and the other members “were kind of stunned” that the Selectboard has no resources to keep the roll-off bins once July rolls in, thus leaving the town with no recycling, and no way for the committee to do its work. “Now it's so close that we couldn't even [continue the service] even if we immediately threw ourselves into it,” she said.
“I said this from the beginning: I think we really need a two-pronged approach,” Gardner told Selectboard members. First is an “immediate solution to our problems,” she said, and the second is “a more long-term solution."
Gardner reminded Selectboard members Newfane isn't unique in this problem - but officials in other towns have contracted with private haulers to maintain and empty their roll-off bins.
Selectboard Chair Carol Hatcher asked the Recycling Committee to go back to the drawing board and do some research, including what other towns are doing come July 1, “so we can budget for it for next year.” One option some officials are considering is to build a transfer station in Newfane. Hatcher said there is value in beginning the process, and asked the committee to have the information ready by October.
Because voters at Town Meeting “clearly said they want the bins [...] I feel like we're letting them down to not have some sort of plan for the near future,” Gardner said.
“If we don't have anything in place for [residents] to deal with their recycling, they will find a solution,” she said, and that solution may be “throwing it over a bank."
Board member Marion Dowling noted that on her walks through Townshend - a town with a transfer station - she sees trash dumped in rivers and meadows.
Not everyone agreed with Gardner's view that, at least in the short term, the town should keep the bins.
Roads Foreman and former Selectboard Chair Todd Lawley questioned the fairness of the process, noting 50-100 people showed up to Town Meeting to make decisions for approximately 1,200 residents.
Board member Chris Williamson said the Town Meeting vote was nonbinding, and “there is absolutely no money this year to do anything with that. We don't have any money for recycling,” he said.
Gardner said there was discussion during budgeting season about including a line item for recycling - but Williamson wasn't on the Selectboard then - and, “for some reason, I don't know why, the Board decided” not to fund it.
That puts the Recycling Committee “in a hard spot,” Gardner said, because residents have an expectation of the committee and it can't fulfill it.
Gardner suggested the Selectboard hold a Special Town Meeting to “vote some money for having bins.”
Lawley was having none of it.
“As somebody who has to drive by the bins every day and clean” up the illegal dumping there, “[I say], get rid of the bins,” he said. Lawley said people “from all over the place, not just Newfane,” dump items like microwaves and televisions and, “they leave it on the ground and it sits there until somebody from the Road crew picks it up [and] it costs the town money to get rid of it.”
Lawley said the same panic occurred when the town closed its dump. “Everyone was up in arms,” but residents either hired private haulers or took trash to the District's Brattleboro facility.
“It's the same with recycling. The [private haulers] will do the recycling. And, if you're taking your trash to Brattleboro, put your recycling in the car and go to Brattleboro with it,” Lawley said.
The area around the roll-off bins “is an eyesore - in a historic village - and it's disgusting out there,” Lawley said.
Resident Ken Estey said he wasn't convinced removing the bins would stop people from illegally dumping there, and asked the Selectboard “to be mindful of that.”
Gardner said she appreciated Lawley's comments and concerns, but noted “at Town Meeting we asked voters what they wanted. If we didn't want to do that, we shouldn't have asked them.”