The city’s transfer station, which has been operating without a permit for years, will close Friday as Mayor Anthony Staffieri tries to negotiate a deal to use a facility from a neighboring city, most likely Ansonia.
The closure may not be permanent, as the city will also be trying to get a valid permit to run the transfer station — and officials will be meeting with its union workers to figure out who should run the place.
It is not known how long the transfer station will be closed.
The closure, decided at Tuesday’s Board of Aldermen meeting, does not affect weekly roadside garbage and recyclable pick-ups.
The Pine Street transfer station is where Derby residents can dump household trash for free. Other garbage — including car tires, couches, roof shingles, refrigerators and recyclables, among many others — can be dropped off there for a fee, based on the size of the load.
The transfer station has been embroiled in controversy after allegations of mismanagement arose last year.
Two city Department of Public Works employees who ran the facility were fired after the Board of Aldermen discovered the transfer station had woefully inadequate daily dump logs — records that are required by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The city brought in a private company — Annex Associates — to correct a laundry list of violations issued by the state DEP.
However, the state Labor Board of Relations recently ordered Annex out, saying city officials blatantly ignored its contractual obligations to the city’s union workers by not talking to the union before extending the (non-union) Annex contract.
Meanwhile, the two fired, union-member Derby DPW workers are trying to get their jobs back.
Further complicating the matter — the DEP, which, according to Derby Corporation Counsel Joseph Coppola, is breathing down the city’s neck in an effort to clean up their act at the dump.
The Derby dump has been operating outside the law for years, but DEP officials apparently did not notice until 2008, city officials said.
The city faces massive potential fines from the state, because the transfer station is out-of-date. Example — it doesn’t have a building to dump and sort trash. Instead, sorting is down on the ground in the open air.
Derby officials had been using Annex as a sort of security blanket between the city and the DEP, according to what officials said at Tuesday’s Board of Aldermen meeting.
Annex has been in the long process of trying to correct the violations — while attempting to get a valid permit to operate.
However, with the recent decision from the Labor Board, Derby is left with an illegal transfer station.
“Everything that is happening there is in violation of the law. We don’t have a permit,” Coppola told the Board of Aldermen.
The Board of Aldermen, after several residents urged them to keep the transfer station open, entered into an executive session Tuesday night to discuss the matter.
Executive session meetings are closed to the public. They are allowed under state law to discuss matters such as personnel and legal strategy.
After emerging from the closed-door meeting, the Aldermen unanimously voted to close the transfer station.
Rich Antonucci, the principal of Annex Associates, said his company has been working hard to correct violations at the transfer station — but he’d have the place ready for new operators by the close of the business Friday
