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Officials of Canaan, a town tucked in the northeasternmost corner of Essex County near the Canadian and New Hampshire borders, can’t get food scraps from here to there.
The town says it is unable to comply with a new food scrap composting mandate for residents that went into effect July 1. Commercial composting requirements went into effect in 2017 for large producers of food scrap waste.
The law is intended to keep food scraps out of landfills, because they’re easily compostable.
The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation accused Canaan in late September of failing to collect food scraps at its transfer station.
Even though the town could be fined, officials say there’s no reasonable way to comply with the food scraps law.
“It’s not that we don’t want to,” said Gregory Noyes, one of Canaan’s three selectboard members.
He said the town doesn’t have a local place where it can easily set up a composting site, nor has anyone been able to help. The town had been talking to a local farmer about accepting food scraps, Noyes said, but the farmer doesn’t have the manpower or time to compost them.
“It was suggested that we could get a hauler to come in from other areas, and we figured out the cost, and it’s going to cost around $4,000” a year, he said. “That ain’t gonna happen. We don’t have $4,000 to spend.”
Fewer than 1,000 people live in Canaan, known for its Ethan Allen furniture factory. On Monday, selectboard members discussed a way they could avoid the state violation — acquiring a collection container for food scraps and installing it at the transfer station — but the plan remains uncertain.
In 2012, state legislators passed Act 148, Vermont’s universal recycling and composting law. The law’s final phase took effect in July: Individuals were banned from throwing out food waste; the goal was to compost the food scraps, so they didn’t wind up in a landfill.
An earlier phase in July 2017 required transfer stations to offer food scrap collection, “so that it was as easy to compost something as it was to throw it away,” said Josh Kelly, solid waste program manager for the Department of Environmental Conservation.
More than 100 transfer stations around the state collect food scraps, he said, either paid for through property taxes or service fees.
Kelly said state officials have been talking to Canaan officials about food scrap collection since 2017. At one point, it seemed the town transfer station had been offering the services.
But after a complaint this year from someone trying to drop off food scraps at the station, state officials found the town hadn’t been collecting the organic waste.
Noyes said the town never had, though the transfer station does send material to a landfill in New Hampshire, where methane gas is extracted and used for energy.
“We’ve been trying to get something done for quite some time,” he said.
Kelly had suggested out-of-town haulers to the local board, including one based in Albany — 60 miles from Canaan — and one with hubs in the Newport area (47 miles) and St. Johnsbury (62 miles).
Both were willing to haul food scraps from Canaan, Kelly said, and their rates were “pretty much in the market of what food-scrap collection costs.”
The selectboard members told local lawmakers Sens. John Rodgers and Bobby Starr, and Rep. Paul Lefebvre, at a meeting Oct. 19 that those options aren’t viable.
Noyes and other local officials believe the costs of hauling away food scraps are more than the small town can bear.
According to the 2019 town report, Canaan had a 2020 transfer station budget of $72,670. The town’s total 2020 budget was about $473,700.
Town officials say hauling away the food scraps would negate any environmental benefits from food scrap collection, because of truck emissions. The nearest composting locations are all between one hour and one hour and 20 minutes away.
“That’s giving you another carbon footprint, and that doesn’t do well with the environment,” Selectboard Chair Frank Sawicki Jr. said at a board meeting Monday night.
“So if we’re trying to take this food waste out to help the environment, then we drive all that way to take it someplace, (it doesn’t help),” Sawicki said.
Kelly said the state is trying to work with Canaan — and officials have worked with small towns before. He cited a 2017 partnership between the state and the High Meadows Fund, a nonprofit, to fund food scrap collection by municipalities and waste districts.
The Canaan board decided Monday to look into getting a 20-cubic-yard container to collect scraps at the transfer station. That step could be funded in the town budget voters will consider in March, but Noyes said Kelly agreed to see if one can be loaned or donated.
The arrangement could resolve the dispute for now, Kelly said, as long as the scraps are composted. But local officials are still wondering, where will the food scraps be sent for compost?
Sawicki said they’d have to figure it out in the future.
If the town doesn’t comply, the state Agency of Natural Resources may file a civil complaint with a penalty. The town would be fined $1,000 if it waived the right to a hearing in the case.
“I think that was premature, personally,” Noyes said of the notice and threat of a penalty.
But he’s hopeful.
“I think we can come up with a solution,” he said. The small town just “can’t always react and solve the problem immediately.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: In isolated Canaan, town officials defy the state’s food scrap rules.