The state Department of Environmental Protection would not subject city workers to hefty fines if and when they return to operate the city’s transfer station, even though the city doesn’t have a permit, a DEP official said.
Derby has been operating the transfer station without a DEP permit since about 1996 — something city officials said they didn’t not know until 2008, when the DEP issued notice of violations.
The DEP and city officials are working with on a consent decree — a legal order that would set forth a formal plan to bring the place into compliance. The city could be subject to fines from the DEP, when all said and done.
The consent decree should be finalized within the next few months.
Background
The city closed its transfer station on Pine Street at the end of the day Friday after the state Labor Board of Relations ruled Annex — the private, non-union company running the transfer station on behalf of the city — had to go. The Labor Board said the city has to negotiate with the union regarding the transfer station’s future.
A transfer station is a place where residents can drop off everything from household trash to refrigerators.
In 2008, the city removed, then fired, two union workers from the Department of Public Works who had been running the facility. The city workers had been mismanaging the facility by not keeping proper records, according to findings of from a Board of Aldermen subcommittee.
Who Gets Fined?
City officials — based on information they received from the DEP — have said putting DPW workers back in a transfer station without a permit would leave the “certified operator,” the state-licensed individual supervising the day-to-day operations, subject to fines as high as $10,000.
Not likely, said Robert Isner, the DEP’s director of the Waste Engineering and Enforcement.
While the transfer station is operating without a permit, the city has been cooperating with the DEP to correct the situation.
When fines are levied, the DEP almost always fines the permittee — in this case, the City of Derby — not individual workers, Isner said.
A rogue individual certified operator could be fined if he or she did something blatantly illegal — such as burying hazardous materials underground, without the knowledge of his supervisor and city administrators.
But, short of that — the city is responsible for the transfer station’s operation and the errors of its employees, the DEP official said.
“It is very, very seldom that the department looks at individual town employees or the permittee’s employees as being the most responsible party,” Isner said.
“If there are problems with the operation of a facility, the department’s normal course of action is to work through the permittee,” Isner said. “With this specific transfer station, last year we had some concerns about activities at the site. We issued a notice of violation to the City of Derby and we also issued a similar notice of violation to its contractor, Annex Associates.”
Those statements appear to contradict a state statute and a state operating manual recently referenced by Ken Hughes, president of the Board of Aldermen.
The state statute was also mentioned several times in the 2008 findings issued by the Board of Aldermen subcommittee.
“That’s almost comical. We were told totally different by the DEP throughout this whole process,” Hughes said.
Regardless of the fine issue — the transfer station was badly mismanaged and the city had to close it once the Labor Board ordered Annex out, Hughes said.
Annex was shielding Derby with its insurance, Hughes said.
“We don’t have a permit. It’s a liability issue. What if a member of the public goes there and gets hurt and now it’s common knowledge we don’t have a permit?” Hughes asked.
How Did We Get Here?
One question on the mind of Derby residents lately — how did the city run an illegal transfer station for so long?
Huges said last week a DEP official told him the Derby transfer station essentially slipped through the cracks.
Isner agreed with the assessment.
“Characterizing it as a case that fell through the cracks is accurate. We were not actively aware that the full operating permit was not in place,” he said.
In the late 1990s, municipalities throughout the state were transitioning old landfills to transfer stations, which are better for the environment.
While Derby received a permit to construct the transfer station, no one from the city applied to the DEP for an operating permit — and no one from the DEP ever followed up.
“They obtained their permit to construct, but it was never followed up with a permit to operate. It was something the city should have applied for. It was not something the department caught.”
