WARWICK — Following a dissatisfactory year-end inspection of the Warwick Transfer Station, the town’s Transfer Station Commission is putting together a plan to clean up the property before May 31.
Jan Ameen, executive director of the Franklin Regional Solid Waste Management District, performed the inspection in late November and communicated the results to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Among six necessary corrective actions, debris and litter proved to be the most severe problem.
“It’s visually ugly,” Town Coordinator David Young said. “Stuff that’s headed for the bins doesn’t always get in the bins.”
Ameen wrote in her third-party inspection report that “debris and litter are found throughout the entire site, in the surrounding woods, next to rolloffs (and) especially around (the) bulky waste roll-off.”
Young said the problem is a tidiness issue, not an environmental concern, but that “this is not the first time we’ve seen this kind of report.”
According to the list of corrective actions the town received from MassDEP, the debris on the property must be cleaned up by May 31 and Transfer Station Attendant George Roaf’s shed must be cleaned up by March 31. Roaf was also instructed to cease accepting and storing household hazardous waste products, which instead must be brought to the Bernardston Transfer Station, a regional collection site for such waste, by Jan. 31.
Additional actions include posting the waste ban plan in Roaf’s shed by Jan. 15, moving emergency contact information from the outdoor bulletin board to inside Roaf’s shed and placing universal waste stickers on all drums and boxes containing florescent lamps.
North County’s two other transfer stations had fewer corrective actions.
The Bernardston Transfer Station needed to supply batteries for its methane detector by the end of 2016, as well as clean up wind-blown recyclable containers near the recycling rolloff and clean up litter around the facility’s perimeter by March 1.
“We need to do a bit of a better job cleaning up around the dumpsters,” Chairman of the Bernardston Board of Selectmen Andrew Girard said during a December meeting. “We need to make sure it’s being cleaned up on a weekly basis.”
The Northfield Transfer Station’s sole corrective action was to have the Department of Public Works post a waste ban sign at the facility’s main entrance.