Gov. Ned Lamont is scolding state lawmakers for what he described as a failure to adequately address the state’s overloaded solid-waste systems, after the legislature departed Hartford this month without offering money to develop a new facility to manage the state’s trash.
That decision, Lamont said, had left the state with “no clear path” for the development of new infrastructure in the Hartford area that can handle the nearly 860,000 tons of the region’s trash that is currently being shipped to landfills in the Midwest each year.
“This is both environmentally and fiscally irresponsible,” the governor said in a letter to lawmakers. “The multi-pronged approach I proposed in February would have returned Connecticut to self-sufficiency and significantly reduced, if not eliminated, our reliance on out-of-state landfills to manage our waste.”
Lamont’s proposals for dealing with trash — which included placing a fee on every ton of trash shipped out of state, and mandating that manufacturers of paper and plastic packaging take greater responsibility for their products that fill up waste streams — were largely stripped from a waste management bill intruded by the governor during the subsequent of behind-the-scenes negations by lawmakers.
While Lamont ultimately signed the legislation on Thursday, he said that he did so with concerns that the bill would impose new charges on residential electric bills to subsidize waste-to-energy plants, without providing a long term strategy for ensuring adequate management of trash within the state’s borders.
Instead, Lamont said, lawmakers offered a redundant process to request information about what types of facilities could one day replace a shuttered waste-to-energy plant in Hartford’s South Meadows.
That proposal came through a separate bill that was one of five that Lamont vetoed on Thursday. In a message explaining his decision, the governor said the legislation was duplicative of a process the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection had already completed — and which drew interest from several developers of modern waste-disposal faculties, including those that turn garbage into gas that can be burned to produce electricity.
“Running another similar, but more limited [request] would be at best both duplicative for the department and confusing for the private sector,” Lamont said.
Both lawmakers and environmental advocates have been similarly critical of the work done during this year’s legislative session to address the state’s handling of trash.
“I agree, it did not go far enough, although it is a step forward,” said state Sen. Rick Lopes, D-New Britain, who serves as one of the chairs of the Environment Committee.
Political bickering ultimately sank many of the more ambitious proposals for dealing with trash, Lopes said, adding of the final bill, “It is what we were able to get passed.”
For others, however, the legislature’s approach to dealing with trash was a step in the wrong direction.
“I understand that shipping 860,000 tons of waste out of state is the worst situation possible, but they seemed to have come pretty close,” said Lori Brown, the executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, calling the legislation signed by Lamont a “epic failure.”
Of particular ire for environmental advocates like Brown was a section of the bill authorizing the Connecticut Green Bank to issue up to $500 million in bonds to finance the development of a future waste disposal facility, including a gasification plant — a type of carbon-producing facility that the Green Bank had previously been barred from supporting.
Legislative leaders, on the other hand, said that commitment from the Green Bank would mean nothing unless the state can come up with a long-term revenue source to repay the bonds.
Looking ahead, the governor urged the legislature to reconsider its rejection of other measures to expand mandatory diversion programs that drew opposition from businesses and trash collection companies.
“The success of those pilots and programs provides a clear path forward to a self-sufficient future where organics and packaging materials are not hauled to out-of-state landfills but instead are responsibly managed in state at a lower cost to residents,” Lamont said in the letter to lawmakers. “We can and must realize that future.”
Meanwhile in Stratford on Friday, lawmakers and fuel industry leaders were gathering to celebrate the one-year anniversary of legislation with impacts on both the state’s greenhouse-gas reduction goals and waste management.
The law, signed by Lamont last June, requires that home heating oil sold in Connecticut be mixed with a gradually-increasing amount of biofuel that can be processed from used cooking oil from restaurants — reducing the need for conventional oil.
In the first year since the law went into effect, it eliminated the need for an estimated 17 million gallons of home heating oil, resulting in a reduction in CO2 emissions equivalent to running tens-of-thousands of cars, according to the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association. (While the grease used to make biofuel eliminates waste, it would not otherwise end up in the same piles of trash as those being shipped out of state).
“This is something that we can do right now to impact the environment,” said Nicholas D’Addario, the fourth-generation manager of Hi-Ho Energy Services in Bridgeport. “A lot of other ideas that may come out in the future, it’s a ways out.”