EHGAZETTE

East Hartford's Town Council took the first small, formal step Tuesday night to take back some control over its garbage disposal cost and operation.

Since 1981 the town was one of the first municipalities to sign on with the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, a quasi-public authority which operates an incinerator burning the towns rubbish and converting it into electricity.

But dissatisfaction with the way CRRA has been managed, and lack of control over the costs and the lagging manner in which the quasi-public authority has embraced recycling and ‘green technology' has finally pushed bedrock communities - such as East Hartford - to seek an alternative. And that alternative might be establishment of its own cooperative with other cities and towns.

Mayor Melody Currey has been working on the idea since June 2008 with other mayors and selectmen that belong to CROG - the Capitol region Council of Governments. With East Hartford's contract with CRRA up in 2012, the CROG towns are considering forming their own municipal authority as an alternative to CRRA. It may save the towns a significant sum. East Hartford, for example, is at the mercy of CRRA's tipping fees.

The town tries to seal its budget in March, but CRRA typically notifies the town much later as to what the tipping fee will be. Right now it is around $60 to $70 per ton; however Mayor Currey feels the actual cost to CRRA should be lower. Like other municipal leaders in CRRA member towns, she has no way of knowing for sure as CRRA's books are closed, even to its member towns.

If the authority was functioning solely with the public's interest in mind, and tipping fees were stable and predicable, the relationship would be better. But bad investments by CRRA managers, whose salaries are also kept secret, didn't make the authority any friends. Then the towns were forced to sue CRRA for keeping the better part of a large Enron bankruptcy court judgement to be applied for future projects; member towns, which might have preferred a rollback in the tipping fees which increased to cover the Enron debacle had no say in how CRRA would use the Enron settlement funds.

"It's out of control with CRRA," said Mayor Currey. "There's a total lack of respect for their customer and owner, which is supposed to be the member towns."

Tuesday night the East Hartford Town Council authorized the modest expenditure of $500 - part of its share of a study exploring the feasibility of establishing a new authority controlled by the member towns. That would be a big change, said the mayor.

East Hartford has joined with 70 other towns - as many as 100 are interested - and CROG hired a consultant to recommend how to proceed. The mayor says they found six alternative companies interested in the municipal solid waste contract. The consultant came back and suggested how the towns proceed in a report made last November. Mayor Currey chairs the CROG committee made up of selectman Dick Barlow, John Adams, city of Hartford designee and Mary Glassman of Simsbury.

They discovered there is a viable private market to handle the solid waste out there.

"CRRA is not our only alternative," said Currey. Friday she took part in a telephone call with many of the towns interested in joining the effort, which would be known as the Central Connecticut Solid Waste Facility.

"We no longer have the landfills, but in Stamford they are wrapping their trash in Saran wrap, and shipping it to Ohio by train. It is a viable option," said the mayor. Town Council Chairman Richard Kehoe said he did not think that shipping trash out of state was responsible of the town, but said the Council voted to back the study to se what solutions they came up with.

"We own the plant in Hartford, but we have no say in CRRA. The governor and the legislative leaders name the authority, and MDC towns create 38 to 45 percent of the waste - but we do not have one person on CRRA's board representing us."

Mayor Currey said the towns will ultimately need to go to the legislature to change or ammend the existing authority or authorize any new trash authority as an alternative. But the towns willingness to take those steps speak more to the sense of frustration than the issue over tipping fees. From recycling to mattress pick-up, the town's charge CRRA has been too slow to respond to innovation and change, or provide member towns with financial information.

"CRRA doesn't seem to have any discussions with us. When we ask them to consider a change in the solid waste being collected, CRRA said ‘we're too busy.' That's a slap in the face," said Mayor Currey. "We are playing a lot for administration, and an administration that does not appear to be responsible. The feeling we have is that we can do this, and do it a lot cheaper."