Though New Canaan last year relocated the town’s mulch pile from Lapham Road to the Transfer Station (to prevent contractors from hauling off with the valuable material), some residents are still ducking into the original site to take pails of it home, officials say.
There haven’t been any complaints about the practice and it hasn’t gotten out of hand—likely because it’s physically very demanding, said Tiger Mann, assistant director of the Department of Public Works.
“They’re carrying trashcans full of compost in and out because there’s a gate, and that gets old after a while, so you can imagine they’re not carrying much,” Mann said. “It’s a 5-gallon pail kind of thing, no big deal.”
The town carts mulch from Lapham up to the Lakeview Avenue facility—where officials can ensure that only New Canaanites are getting at it—and the change has worked out well. Contractors are no longer taking it.
Park & Recreation Commission Chair Sally Campbell said at the group’s most recent meeting that greater numbers of people are availing themselves of New Canaan’s mulch since the town made the switch.
Campbell and the commission are gathering information about whether it’s feasible to involve groups such as restaurants and the schools to bring their own produce-type waste for mulching, as well.
“We should drive it [the initiative],” Campbell said at the Wednesday meeting, held in the Lapham Community Center. “I think it’s a great thing.”
Asked for their opinion on the prospect, officials with the town’s Conservation Commission said they’d be open to investigating it.
Commissioner Susan Sweitzer said there are rules about what can and cannot be added and that mulch itself takes about one year to break down before it’s useful, so there are practical matters to be determined before moving forward with such a program.
“We are open to it,” she said. “It depends on what the controls are.”
Mann said there’s a state-issued permit for the mulch pile that would need to be amended if the way New Canaan collects its raw material changes.
There’s also an open question of just where the “new” mulch would go.
“It would probably have to be separate from our leaf mulch,” he said. “We don’t know if we would have enough room in there to then separate off just composted vegetables and things, because you wouldn’t be able to compost them together. So we would have to kind of figure out how much room that would take up and then how much time and effort, we don’t know that either, as far as when they can come and dispose of it, who can dispose of it, how can we regulate that. There’s a lot of other things associated with it than just ‘Hey just bring your stuff.’ ”