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10/12/2016 08:30 AMThe fly landed on the desk for just a nano-second before the red swatter whipped down on it.
“That’s nothing. I can kill 20 a day,” Paul Koritkoski says, and noting a moving pencil, asks, “You’re not writing that down, are you?”
Paul is ideally situated for fly killing. He is the Transfer Station manager at the Deep River waste facility. He describes himself as a one-man band, because he is the only town employee regularly at the facility. On a recent day, he greeted a steady stream people, most of whom called him by name, as they came to offload everything from household garbage to brush and lawn cuttings.
“It seems everybody knows me,” he says.
One man peeked his head into the office to ask if there was a special place for stuffed animals.
“Throw them in the garbage,” Paul replies.
In addition to household garbage, the station accepts a wide variety of recyclable material from electronics to old mattresses. The recycling Dumpsters specify what can be placed inside each, but Paul says that people do not always follow the labels.
“I try to help and most people try to do it right, but you know, people are people,” he says.
Plastic garbage bags are collected in an massive covered pit before being crammed into large container trucks to be carted away and burned.
“I think they do the burning at a place in Hartford,” Paul says.
There is a designated location for brush, yard, and garden material. In another area, the carcasses of eight refrigerators stand empty. The freon gas, used as a coolant, has been removed from them. Paul says that collection represents about two months worth of refrigerators deposited at the transfer station. Air conditioners are also drained of refrigerant before disposal.
But what some people no longer want, other people are happy to have. On a recent day, outside Paul’s office that collection included an infant stroller, a vacuum cleaner, a bag of cat litter, a child’s Spider Man thermos, a car seat, and several old 33-rpm records of artists including Barbra Streisand and Chuck Mangione. One visitor was going through the record collection selecting albums for himself.
“We get all kinds of things, tractors, lawn mowers,” Paul says.
He leaves the items outside for a week before they are hauled away or recycled. Near the recycling bins, there were other objects up for grabs, among them a swivel desk chair and a stove.
“One burner is gone but otherwise it’s okay,” Paul says.
Outside his office, Paul has plastic bins of books, mostly paperbacks that people have brought to the Transfer Station. The bins themselves are also Transfer Station finds. Paul takes all the books inside every night and puts them out again in the morning. Unlike the other items, he does not dispose of books after just a week.
Paul’s office is an illustration of the ongoing bounty the station receives. His microwave, air conditioner, and refrigerator are Transfer Station rescues.
“The chair you’re sitting on came in today,” he tells a visitor. “There was another chair here before.”
Paul is a Deep River native and a graduate of Valley Regional High School. On his desk, along with a picture of him in front of a huge mound of plastic garbage bags, is a picture of the 1967 high school basketball team he played on.
“Senior year, we did well, not great, but we got into the tournament,” he says.
Paul has his own opinion on the length of the uniforms on today’s players.
“Their shorts are hanging below the knees,” he says. “It amazes me that they can dribble without getting tangled up.”
Paul recalls that 1967 was a good sports year for Valley Regional. The boy’s soccer team also did well.
“Got beat in the finals,” Paul remembers, and the baseball team won the Shoreline championship—Paul was a member of both teams.
After graduating from high school, Paul served in the Army Signal Corps in Vietnam, stationed for a time in Saigon. When he got out of the service, he spent some years as a sheet metal worker. After the economy went into a tailspin, he picked up some part-time work with the Town of Deep River that led to the position he has today.
The Transfer Station is open four days a week, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Paul does other jobs for the town on the fifth day to make a complete work-week. Residents of Deep River with town stickers (for which Paul checks) can bring for both recycling and garbage to the facility. Chester residents with appropriate stickers can bring recycling material, though not garbage, because no such recycling site exists in Chester.
Paul has been at the Transfer Station long enough that he is no longer aware of the smell emanating from the trash bags.
“I’m used to it. Don’t smell it at all,” he says. “Working on weekends, that’s the hardest part.”
Neither weekends nor odors are enough to discourage potential job applicants as Paul contemplates retirement, though he has no specific date set in his mind.
“Some people have already let me know they are interested,” he says.
Though he is a regular at the Transfer Station, Paul doesn’t have to bring his own rubbish with him to work. He explains that lives in a condominium and has regular trash pick-up.