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Stand Together and Fight

I reside at Founders Village in Clinton. My neighbors and I attended the Inlands Wetlands Commission public hearing for the dump an out-of-town developer wants to build next to our property. We left the hearing more convinced than ever that this dump would be a disaster for the entire town.

The site’s surrounded by wetlands. The applicant’s engineer said no dump activities would occur in the wetlands. When asked by the commission if he had evidence the wetlands wouldn’t be affected, he replied he didn’t. A member of the community with experience in waste disposal pointed out the engineer hadn’t even submitted a required FEMA application. He provided the engineer with the application to ensure that it would get done. Several other important questions received responses like, “I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.”

Clearly, the applicant hadn’t done his homework or, worse yet, intentionally tried to conceal important information. The developer has tried before to get this dump approved, arguing it was the same use of the property as the previous business there, but the previous business, a Unilever warehouse, simply stored clean merchandise for sale. That’s very different from a recycling dump.

From the application, we know the developer plans to bring in 100 truckloads of construction and demolition debris, which could include sheetrock, asbestos, plastics, iron, aluminum, copper, steel, appliances, electronics, paints, stains, antifreeze, propane containers, batteries, tires, used oil filters, and used oil, daily. They plan to stockpile milled asphalt and wood debris and could include contaminated soil. We all remember the huge dump fires in Essex and Willimantic. We must prevent that sort of disaster from ever happening here in Clinton.

The hearing was continued until Tuesday, April 3. I really hope that our community will attend, stand together, and fight this terrible plan.

Judith Geany-Hirsch

Clinton