Thomas MacMIllan Photo
Willy Harrell said the Dumpster at his apartment building goes for weeks without being emptied. In the summertime, it starts to smell so bad that he can’t even sit outside.
Harrell aired his grievances one recent morning at 300 Winthrop Ave. Around him, trash littered the apartment building’s patchy lawn. The scent of garbage wafted over from the Dumpster 20 yards away, which overflowed with refuse (pictured below).
A new ordinance amendment under consideration by the Board of Aldermen could give Harrell some relief. The proposed legislation would require owners of apartment buildings and commercial property to submit cleanliness plans detailing their Dumpster usage and efforts to keep trash in its place. The proposal would also require property owners to have recycling plans.
In addition to that proposal — which is aimed at property owners — the Department of Public Works (DPW) is proposing a companion amendment aimed at trash haulers. That ordinance amendment would require haulers to license each of their Dumpsters with the city and provide the DPW with details of their locations and sizes. The amendment would also clarify regulations covering recycling haulers.
The pair of trash proposals is part of an effort to promote recycling in the city, to ensure that trash haulers are using the local municipal transfer station, and to give the city more teeth to enforce garbage-related violations — like letting Dumpsters overflow for weeks.
The legislative efforts are also part of an effort to increase recycling. Read more about that here.
The City Plan Commission approved the proposals last Wednesday. A public hearing is scheduled for this coming Thursday in front of the aldermanic City Services and Environmental Policy Committee, ahead of a full vote by the Board of Aldermen.
Read the proposed amendments here and here. The first would amend Chapter 30 ¾ ‑16 of the New Haven Code of Ordinances Regarding Waste Disposal. The second would amend Article XVI, concerning commercial waste and recycling collectors.
DPW Director John Prokop said the amendments are designed to meet a couple of objectives. First, they will help to compel private haulers to offer recycling services to their customers. Second, the proposals will allow the city to better track the flow of solid waste out of the city.
By law, haulers are required to take trash removed from New Haven to the public municipal transfer station on Middletown Avenue. But some haulers may be skirting the rules by taking their trash to private transfer stations, where they can get a better rate, according to Prokop. Under the new ordinance amendment, haulers would be required to register the size and location of all of their Dumpsters with the city. That way, the DPW will have a better idea of the volume of garbage they should be seeing at the transfer station, Prokop explained.
Further, the license fees associated with registering dumpsters might encourage haulers to use smaller receptacles, which could create more room for recycling containers. The annual fee for a Dumpster sticker would be between $10 for a 30-gallon toter to $250 for a 30-yard dumpster.
Prokop explained how the system would work. When a hauler comes in to register, the company would be required to submit a site plan showing all of its customers and where their Dumpsters are. Then DPW staff would go to all the sites, verify the hauler’s list, label the Dumpsters with official stickers, and charge the hauler appropriately. Companies that fail to license their Dumpsters could face fines of up to $250.
At Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting, Chairman Ed Mattison voiced concern that the plan would create a bureaucratic burden for the DPW. “The sites could be in the thousands,” he said. That’s a lot of Dumpsters to visit and sticker.
The enormity if the task is a valid concern for the first year, Prokop said. But in the long run, “it’s not necessarily an additional burden on us.” Self-policing will be done by the haulers themselves, who will report to the DPW if one of their competitors’ Dumpsters is without a sticker, Prokop said.
Prokop said that haulers could be opposed to handing over a list of all their customers, with locations. He said he plans to meet with all the companies if and when the legislation passes, to allay any concerns.
Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said the new ordinance amendment does not require haulers to do anything state law doesn’t already mandate.
Currently, recycling is required by law. But the city offers recycling services only to residential properties of fewer than six units. That’s about to change, according to Smuts. Not only will the city be offering recycling to commercial properties and apartment buildings, it wants to ensure that private haulers are doing it and are properly regulated. Towards that goal, the new legislation amends the ordinance to cover recyclers and not just trash haulers.
Recycling and Cleanliness For All
The companion to the amendment aimed at trash haulers is the amendment aimed at property owners. That’s the one that would require commercial buildings to submit both recycling and “site cleanliness” plans to the DPW. Site cleanliness plans would have to include the location of all trash receptacles on a property, the licenses of the receptacles, the name of the designated trash hauler, the weekly schedule for trash pick-up, and the weekly schedule for cleaning and maintaining the containers and their immediate area. People who fail to submit the plans could face a fine of up to $250.
Matt Short, whose family business — Chelsea Company— owns two apartment buildings in New Haven, said he is not opposed to the plan, but has questions about enforcement.
“To up the ante is good,” Short said. “I would have concerns about how the implementation would work.”
It’s very hard to police the trash and recycling practices of one’s tenants, he said. “You can’t supervise a trash container all the time.”
“Is there a component that puts some of the onus on the users?” Short asked. “The level of control that property owners have over the living habits of tenants is pretty low.”
Short questioned whether the city is biting off more than it could chew. “There may be more loaded into this than they’re going to be able to enforce.”
He also voiced a concern that the extra duty of creating recycling and site cleanliness plans might land on property owners who are already responsive to the law, while owners who don’t care will continue to ignore trash concerns with impunity. “Sometimes the burden of compliance falls on those who are already compliant,” he said.
The Chelsea Company already offers recycling at it’s apartment complex on Dwight Street (pictured above), Short said.
Short said that overall the ordinance amendment is a good initiative.
Another property owner, who asked to remain anonymous, was less encouraging.
“I can’t take another burden,” said the man, who owns a number of commercial properties in New Haven, including 100 apartments.
“It’s a good idea as long as there’s no penalty involved,” he said. “The problem is I have enough trouble getting people to use the blue buckets. … You can’t be every place.”
“Everything in New Haven is getting too complex,” he said.
He shared one of Short’s concerns. “The people that want to do it get hurt twice as much. … This could be very hurtful for me.”
Smell that?
Willy Harrell has lived at 300 Winthrop Ave. (also known as 1533 Chapel St.) for eight years. The owner has ceased to take care of trash around the property, he said. Harrell said he’s all for the “cleanliness plan” ordinance amendment.
“That’s a great idea, if the Board of Aldermen wants to do it,” he said. “I always thought the city should do something about it.”
Harrell’s building, on the northeast corner of Winthrop Avenue and Chapel Street, is encircled with debris. Cigarette butts, food wrappers, empty cups, and plastic bags littered the ground on Friday. A battered blue Dumpster sat at an angle in a small driveway next to the building. Ripped and overflowing bags of trash lay around it. The distinctive smell of garbage hung in the air.
No one comes regularly to empty the Dumpster, Harrell said. “Sometimes they don’t come but once a month.”
In the summer, when it’s hot, the trash starts smelling so bad that you can’t even sit outside, Harrell said. He said he hasn’t heard from his landlord in some time, and isn’t even sure who owns the building now.
Another tenant said the phone number she has for the landlord now says it has been disconnected. She complained that crack addicts come into the building and sleep in the basement.
A sign on the building’s lawn advertised Keller Williams Realty, but the company’s office in Stratford had no record of an association with the property.
An online database lists the building’s owner as Winthrop Properties LLC, a company based in Great Neck, NY. Principals Zeev Zuckerman and Doron Cohen could not be reached for comment.
The Dumpster was unmarked. But could soon have an official sticker from the DPW.
I think this is a great plan. There are quite a few larger apartment complexes / 6+ unit houses in my neighborhood with very poor garbage collection habits, and absolutely no recycling; some of them are serious eyesores because of the excess garbage that won't fit in the dumpster. However there also needs to be a penalty for non-compliant tenants. No matter how many recycling notices I post in my houses, I often see recyclables thrown out with the garbage and there's very little that I as a landlord can do about it.