by | May 14, 2025 10:51 am | Comments (0)
The following writeup was submitted by the City Plan Department.
Continue reading ‘Resilient New Haven: Continuously Improving Hurricane and Flood Preparedness’
by | May 2, 2025 12:22 pm | Comments (9)
Brian Slattery photos
Follow along on a recycling journey, from the curb ...
... to the transfer station ...
... to the MRF, and beyond.
Truck 148, part of the New Haven Public Works program’s fleet of vehicles, rounded a corner in Newhallville on a spring Tuesday morning.
As happens every weekday in one neighborhood or another in New Haven, the truck and its three-person crew served as the first link in the chain of a system that delivers New Haven’s recyclables from curbsides across the city, to New Haven’s transfer station on Middletown Avenue in Fair Haven, to facilities in Berlin and Willimantic, and beyond.
The journey of those bottles, cans, and plastic containers away from New Haven has changed since the city’s recycling program started decades ago, and tells a small part of the larger story about global waste and how it is and isn’t managed.
by | Apr 29, 2025 1:56 pm | Comments (0)
Rebecca Gentile longing for those Country Roads.
Raffi, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Eagles filled the air at New Haven’s pin, patch, and oddities shop Strange Ways Saturday evening, but it wasn’t the sound system. Local band Typically Divergent was performing their annual Ecology and Neurodiversity concert, featuring covers of songs about loving and protecting our planet. Mellow voices sang familiar, folksy tunes, peppered here and there with clever ad-libs and harmonies.
by | Apr 28, 2025 9:31 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden photo
Truman kindergartener separates her compostable milk from the non-compostable milk carton, with the help of Waste Reduction Consultant Nick DiVito.
Capri Sun, bread, and apple sauce all found a new home at Truman School — thanks to the new addition of a compost bin that fifth graders Jamanielix and Daniel helped introduce to some of New Haven’s youngest students.
by | Apr 21, 2025 3:36 pm | Comments (3)
Revo photo
One of Revo's zero-emissions vehicles, at Tweed.
Emissions-free vehicles are en route to Tweed — as the Morris Cove regional airport won city permission to install a hydrogen fueling station and an electric vehicle charger to help phase out gasoline cars from its fleet.
by | Apr 4, 2025 10:46 am | Comments (5)
Paul Bass photo
Chemistry prof Nilay Hazari at WNHH FM.
In a Prospect Street chemistry lab, Nilay Hazari and his colleagues found a new way to help green the planet.
by | Mar 27, 2025 3:48 pm | Comments (25)
Thomas Breen photos
City climate czar Winter: Get ready for curbside compost.
Seagulls swoop above the trash pile at the city transfer station.
CWPM operations manager Carl Oberg fires a "screamer" to disperse seagulls from the dump. He said he fires this loud-sound device up to 15 times a day. Why? Because seagulls pick up trash and drag it all over the place. Also, "they're known to poop."
The star of a press conference at the city dump Thursday afternoon was an unassuming green plastic bag that, in the not-too-distant future, New Haveners will fill with apple cores and banana peels and leave for curbside pickup on trash day.
by | Mar 20, 2025 4:26 pm | Comments (34)
Laura Glesby photo
Mayor Elicker (right): Trump’s administration is “illegally stymieing and setting up roadblocks to cut off funds that we’ve been legally awarded,”
New Haven has joined a second nationwide lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over the city’s loss of access to tens of millions of dollars in already-allocated grants addressing climate change and clean energy.
by | Mar 11, 2025 2:25 pm | Comments (23)
Thomas Breen file photo
Compostables to be diverted -- on trash day?
The Elicker administration might build out a food scrap collection program as part of the city’s regular weekly trash pickups — if New Haven is successful in its application for a $3.3 million state grant.
by | Mar 10, 2025 12:32 pm | Comments (33)
Thomas Breen photo
Common Ground junior Kris Lebron Romero: "It was more than just a job."
The Trump administration abruptly nixed a $500,000 grant for Common Ground High School’s “Green Jobs Corps” program — throwing 71 teens out of work, and upending an employment-training effort that paid city high schoolers to plant trees and work at farmers markets.
The federal government’s stated justification for the cut was that the grant-funded program promoted “DEI” and “environmental justice,” which run counter to the new administration’s “merit-based” priorities.
by | Mar 7, 2025 8:12 pm | Comments (18)
Jordan Allyn file photo
Climate activists come to City Hall.
A dog, a baby, and several young climate activists went into City Hall. Their purpose was not to deliver a punchline, but rather a request for the city to take transportation seriously.
“DANGER TURN BACK TOXIC FUTURE” read a yellow road sign-esque poster. “DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS NEED TO SURVIVE HERE” read another.
Continue reading ‘Alders Pressed On "Transportation Transformation"’
by | Mar 5, 2025 4:42 pm | Comments (5)
Thomas Breen photo
Ayapantecatl, Leon, and Zurita: Taking out the trash, for a cause.
John S. Martinez School “eco-warriors” Christian Ayapantecatl, Anthony Leon, and Giovanni Zurita walked up James Street’s tree belt, using long plastic “pickers” to grab pieces of paper, plastic, and chicken wing bones before throwing them into a large black trash bag.
They then walked over to stand alongside the mayor, four alders, and two dozen fellow students, city workers, and Fair Haven leaders to talk about a new collaborative effort to keep the neighborhood — and New Haven — clean.
by | Feb 21, 2025 9:29 am | Comments (4)
Maya McFadden photos
Student leaders bring the first new recycling bin to math teacher Julia Pisani.
New bins!
When Scandinavian assemble-your-own furniture retail giant IKEA dropped off 30 new recycling bins at John S. Martinez School in Fair Haven, student council President Christian Ayapantecatl and Vice President Geovanelys Morales were ready to receive them, excited to build on all the progress the school has already made in sustainability.
Continue reading ‘Martinez Keeps Going Green, With IKEA's Help’
by | Feb 19, 2025 9:00 am | Comments (5)
Hamden Newhall Neighborhood Association President Tina Jennings-Herriott.
A Newhall meeting saw neighbors and Hamden town officials engaged in debate over what community members really need, in the latest installment in a group of residents’ fight to allocate one-time federal funds to addressing their crumbling home foundations.
by | Feb 17, 2025 9:15 am | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen file photo
Eco-friendly affordable housing on Dixwell: More, please.
With the Connecticut General Assembly’s legislative session in full swing, New Haven’s eight state lawmakers are pushing 184 different bills that touch on everything from growing housing near transit to digging deep on thermal energy to requiring movie theaters to disclose what time the films, and not just the trailers, actually start.
by | Feb 17, 2025 9:13 am | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden Photo
Don’t go breaking their hearts.
A group of students celebrated Valentine’s Day early by demanding that New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spread the love and hire three coordinators to oversee the district’s climate change-combatting efforts.
by | Feb 12, 2025 8:25 am | Comments (11)
CT Mirror | Shahrzad Rasekh photo
City climate czar Winter: "It's maddening."
Ask Steve Winter how many times a day he’s checked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant funds portal since Jan. 21 and he answers with a wry laugh: “I couldn’t even say.”
Jan. 21 — one day into the Trump administration — he received a notification that the $20 million Community Change grant the City of New Haven had won, in partnership with a coalition of local groups, would be available for use.
But he has not been able to access the account.
by | Feb 3, 2025 1:29 pm | Comments (16)
Brian Slattery Photos
Zrelak: "What you flush down the toilet, dump down the drain, this is where it ends up."
Yuck: "Raggy material," like wipes and tampons, that ends up in the dumpster.
Gary Zrelak, director of operations for the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority, wielded a several-foot-long plastic pipe with a valve at the end, which he nicknamed the “sludge judge.”
He was on a catwalk over the water draining out of the last of three enormous tanks at the East Shore Water Pollution Abatement Facility, taking a core sample of the 14-foot-deep pool.
As he expected, below the surface, the water was still brown, tinted with matter that was settling slowly to the bottom of the pool. But the top three feet of water were clear — almost ready to be released into the New Haven Harbor on a cold winter day.
The tank — and the two preceding it, and the entire facility that runs them — “is connected to everyone, every household and commercial building” in a substantial part of the greater New Haven area, Zrelak said. “They have a toilet, they’re coming here.”
by | Jan 15, 2025 9:36 am | Comments (7)
Asher Joseph file photo
Winter: We're not on track for 2030. Elicker: That assessment's "premature."
New Haven is one step closer to one more electric garbage truck — but still under 10 percent of the way to its goal of a fully electric fleet by 2030.
Continue reading ‘With Trash Truck Approval, City Steps Electric’
by | Jan 3, 2025 3:50 pm | Comments (15)
Thomas Breen file photo
Eggshells and lemons and peels, oh my ...
Zachary Groz photo
... can now be thrown out in city compost bins, including on Crown St.
It’s a great time to be a banana peel in New Haven — as the city has installed three new public composting bins as part of a pilot program to help divert food scraps from the landfill.
by | Dec 18, 2024 12:09 pm | Comments (2)
A bigger bike share program, “climate resilience corridors” in Fair Haven, increased recycling education in the public schools, and energy-efficiency assessments and updates for 350 New Haven homes.
All of that, and much more, is on tap now that the city and the Greater Dwight Development Corporation have landed $20 million in federal funds for a host of different environmentally friendly projects.
Continue reading ‘Feds Send City $20M For Green "Community Change"’
by | Dec 13, 2024 9:21 am | Comments (0)
Altered Futures.
This month there’s a small stretch of forest in City Gallery on Upper State Street — evergreens, ferns, moss — surrounded by a patch of dirt. It might take a moment to see that the plants aren’t rooted in the dirt, however. Rather, they’re planted in a woven aluminum boat, redolent of an ark. It will allow them to leave the gallery alive; maybe it will protect them from what’s coming.
Continue reading ‘Artists Widen The Frame On Climate Change’
by | Dec 9, 2024 9:54 am | Comments (7)
Lisa Reisman photo
The Newhall Neighborhood Association team at Hamden Town Hall.
They talked about their homes sinking into contaminated soil, the walls cracking, their myriad of health issues.
They wore shirts the color of cement to dramatize their plea: Fix our foundations first.
Continue reading ‘Newhall To Hamden: Focus On "Foundations First"’
by | Dec 5, 2024 9:24 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
As the Olin Corporation, with oversight from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), continues its testing at Six Lakes, a.k.a the Powder Farm, to determine the extent of contamination from decades of arms testing and waste dumping, Six Lakes Coalition has finished a round of its own surveying — for community input into what neighboring residents would like the future of the now-forested acreage in southern Hamden to look like.
The resulting report finds that “neighbors desire public open space at Six Lakes that will allow them safe access to a quiet, natural area and provide a gathering space for the local community.” The report was feted Wednesday morning at a gathering at the edge of the property, in which local and state officials reiterated their support for the effort to turn Six Lakes into a public park.
by | Nov 19, 2024 1:30 pm | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen photos
New Haven's industrial port: Watch out, enviro scofflaws.
Tom Breen File Photo
AG Tong: “Gulf Oil ran a defective operation and falsified records to cover its tracks."
An oil tank operator in New Haven’s industrial port has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a state lawsuit that accused the company of falsifying inspection reports and undertaking construction and demolition without pulling the proper permits.
Continue reading ‘Oil Tank Biz Settles Fake-Inspection Case For $2M’