Annex Recycler Alters Expansion Plan

Murphy Road Recycling no longer plans to double the size of its waste transfer station in the Annex — but it does still hope to expand that plant’s services to include household garbage trucked in from throughout the region.

Murphy Director of Operations Jonathan Murray and attorney Ed Spinella gave that update Thursday night at the latest Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) Committee meeting on the second floor of City Hall.

Spinella told the alders that Murphy 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.

The reason for the change in plans? Neighbors didn’t want it.

“With the substantial increase in the facility, we were going to be able to recycle more at the facility and purchase new equipment to sort the material coming in,” he said. ​“Unfortunately, right now, I think the community would prefer we not do that. We listened. We came before you. I think we’re being responsible.”

Neighbors and city Environmental Advisory Council (EAC) members indeed vociferously opposed the planned expansion during two public meetings at City Hall last year. They cited concerns about increased air pollution, noise pollution, and wear and tear on nearby roads.

The plant is currently allowed to process no more than 967 tons of cardboard, packaging, and construction and demolition debris per day. Last year, Murphy representatives said they’re currently processing not even half of that daily allowable tonnage.

So they need new customers. And one plan floated last year to attract new customers is still in the works, Spinella said. That’s to get state permission for the 19 Wheeler St. plant to process and transfer ​“putrescible municipal solid waste” — also known as household garbage — from towns in the surrounding New Haven region.

City residents’ garbage is currently hauled to the Department of Public Works facility on Middletown Avenue as a transfer station, then trucked away from there for incineration.

Murphy has already applied to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to modify the transfer station’s use to authorize the ​“receipt, storage, and consolidation of putrescible municipal solid waste,” according to a July letter sent by state Waste Engineering and Enforcement Division (WEED) Director Robert Isner to the Board of Alders. The state has not yet ruled on Murphy’s application. Spinella said that the company’s application for a special permit for such a use should be heard in December by New Haven’s City Plan Commission.

“The only thing that will occur is that putrescible waste will be part of the waste stream to go into the facility,” he said. ​“It will still be tipped indoors, processed indoors, and transferred on the same day.”

After Spinella and Murray finished providing that context, EAC Chair Laura Cahn (pictured) took the mic. She said that she and the council remain opposed to Murphy expanding its services to include household garbage trucked in from throughout the region.

“We do not feel that’s New Haven’s responsibility” to deal with other towns’ garbage, she said. ​“We are against any more household garbage coming into this facility.”

She said the site smells as it is, and the stink would only get worse if trash were allowed to come in.

“We’ve never received any complaints of smell or odor,” Spinella responded to Cahn’s testimony. ​“It’s stunning to hear that.”

Because, he said, the plant doesn’t currently process any household garbage. Just cardboard, packaging, and construction and demolition debris.

During the committee’s deliberations after the public hearing and after Spinella and Murray had left, Morris Cove Alder and CSEP Committee Chair Sal DeCola thanked Cahn, the EAC, and Annex neighbors who opposed the planned expansion last year.

“It was a long struggle,” he said, ​“but I see now the attorney says that they’re listening to us.”