Allan Appel file photo
Outside Murphy Road Recycling’s plant in the Annex.
Murphy Road Recycling is back — with updated plans to expand its Wheeler Street recycling plant to allow for the handling of household garbage.
City environmentalists are none too pleased, and once again working to stop the plans in their tracks.
A replay of that head-to-head between the claims of free enterprise and environmental justice emerged Wednesday night during the regular monthly meeting of the city Environmental Advisory Council (EAC).
That’s the group that has taken the lead in voicing opposition to previous iterations of the proposed 19 Wheeler St. expansion during hearings in the fall and winter before the City Plan Commission and the Board of Alders.
During Wednesday’s meeting, they discussed Murphy Road Recycling, LLC’s updated plans to take in and send out residential garbage at its Wheeler Street plant. Those plans will come before the City Plan Commission for a vote on Sept. 16.
Last fall Murphy Road Recycling, LLC, the Annex recycler, tried to expand substantially its Wheeler Street plant operations to add processing residential garbage — much of it from neighboring towns — to its quiver of activities.
Neighbors and activists protested the air and noise pollution and the apparent environmental injustice of the proposal. The recycler listened.
Now they’re back with a smaller plan. Activists are back too, saying it stinks once again.
Wednesday’s meeting, which drew two dozen neighbors and officials, was hosted by the group’s chairperson, Laura Cahn, on the Zoom teleconferencing app.
Back in November, primarily due to community opposition, Murphy Road’s Director of Operations Jonathan Murray and attorney Ed Spinella told the Board of Alders that the company had decided to scrap its prior plans to build a 32,000 square-foot addition and install $4 million to $6 million worth of new recycling equipment to its current transfer station at 19 Wheeler St.
A smaller proposal is back on the docket for the Sept . 16 City Plan Commission meeting.
At the new plan’s heart is still the recycling of MSW, which stands not for masters degree in social work but municipal solid waste, or household garbage.
Thomas Breen file photo
EAC Chair Cahn testifying in opposition to the recycling expansion.
“We seem to be permanently involved in the Wheeler issue,” said Cahn. “They knew the whole city was opposed to taking household garbage.”
She informed the Zoom participants about the Sept. 16 meeting, urged them to come to testify at the 7 p.m. hearing, and said, “The EAC will be submitting a letter in opposition.”
New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell, who is also in opposition to the proposed expansion, asked City Plan Director Aïcha Woods and city staffer Stacey Davis, who were attending the meeting, “Are there material changes [compared] to past applications?”
“There haven’t been major technical changes to the application,” replied Davis.
A year ago the application included construction of a new building to process the MSW; she confirmed that Murphy Road has decided not to pursue that.
“The current one includes retrofitting of the current building. Other than [that there are] minor changes to storm water management on site and relocation of existing waste containers,” Davis added.
“They’ve [also] decided not to bring in a new waste sorting machine,” Cahn said. “I personally feel that the promising of something like that is a smokescreen for what they always wanted to do, which is to take in municipal sold waste.”
Other activists at previous community meetings, such as Chris Ozyck, have also sounded that alarm.
“I’m very concerned,” Ozyck said at a Quinnipiac East Management Team meeting last winter, “about a small thing getting in and then expanding.”
The ultimate decision to add this currently non-permitted use rests with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Yet clearly municipal acceptance — and the facts of high asthma rates and other pressing health concerns in the area — - matter especially as the Wheeler Street area is subject to DEEP’s environmental justice program mandates.
Reached by phone after the meeting, Murphy Road’s Jonathan Murray confirmed that the new smaller scale application still seeks to receive “putrescible MSW up to 500 tons a day.”
That MSW or garbage won’t be processed, Murray clarified. After collection the stuff will be misted in the current facility, tipped back into trucks, and sent on for disposal elsewhere.
As to the status of the state permit, Murray said the company expects a response very shortly and they anticipate approval.
A representative from DEEP’s environmental justice program did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.
Click here to read more about Murphy’s updated plans for the Wheeler Street site.