EAST HAVEN, CT — State environmental regulators have cited East Haven for 28 violations at its transfer station at 240 Commerce St., the New Haven Register reported. A notice dated Oct. 30 from the Waste Engineering and Enforcement Division of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection gave the town 30 days to correct them. Any left unfixed after that could bring civil penalties of $25,000 a day for each offense.
A Resident Complaint Led to a June Inspection
The state inspected the station in June after a resident complained, according to the Register. That resident, Lorena Venegas, told the CT Post around the time of the inspection that she had phoned and emailed the state in January about a pile of bulk trash there. She shared photos of it, said the pile kept getting taller and had drawn rodents, and asked why material was sitting at a site meant only for transfers.
The CT Post described Venegas as a frequent critic of Mayor Joseph A. Carfora's administration and the administrator of the East Haven Politics Facebook group. At the time, the town told the CT Post the material came from its scheduled residential bulk-waste collection and was being held temporarily before it was processed and shipped out for disposal.
"The pile, to me as a layman, looked large," Venegas told the Register on Monday. "It looked like a fire hazard to me."
Piles Well Over the Limits
Nine of the 28 violations covered the same problems with different materials, the Register reported: solid waste, scrap metal, and discarded furniture and mattresses that were stored beyond capacity, outside designated areas, uncovered or on the ground.
The notice put numbers on the piles. The inspector estimated 2,327 cubic yards of solid waste where 500 are allowed, and 444 cubic yards of mattresses and box springs against a 200-cubic-yard limit. About 8,000 cubic yards of clean wood sat on site, roughly 5,000 more than the 3,000 the station may store.
Other violations involved missing signs and paperwork, among them a plan to keep pests from feeding and breeding and a contingency plan for shutting the station down. Both of the station's on-site contacts had let their certifications lapse, the notice said, though one of them became certified in July, within a month of the inspection.