WESTFIELD – Health Director Michael Suckau reported Wednesday to the Board of Health that the department has already sold 2,293 access stickers for the Twiss Street transfer station.
‘We’re getting close to what we did all last year,” Suckau said.
The Health Board at a meeting in April 2012 set the cost of the sticker at $10. The stickers are issued based on the city’s fiscal year, which begins July 1 and concludes June 30.
Suckau said that, because sales of the stickers only two months into the fiscal year are close to the entire 2012 fiscal year sales, the department is considering initiating a “point of sale facility at the transfer station so residents won’t have to come to City Hall for that purchase.”
The Health Department is currently located at the Westwood Building on North Elm Street while City Hall undergoes renovation.
The Board of Health approved the sale of transfer station access sticker program in April of 2012 to address concerns raised by City Council members that the open-gate policy was being abused and that the facility, financed through city taxes and fees, was being used by non-residents.
Members of the City Council raised that issue when Suckau appeared before the city’s legislative body on Jan. 5, 2012 to discuss improvements to and funding for the Twiss Street transfer station.
Suckau said that a sticker program was recommended by consultants hired to assess increasing the tipping capacity of the transfer station. The state Department of Environmental Protection currently caps the tip tonnage allow at 50 tons per day. Residential curbside trash collection accounts for nearly the entire current cap limit.
The city has been evaluating a request to the DEP to increase that cap to between 100 and 199 tons a day, which would allow it to expand the facility to allow commercial disposal.
The council approved a bond of more than $200,000 two years ago for construction of a gatehouse and for the design of covered facilities required by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Federal Aviation Administration, as part of a process to increase the tipping tonnage at the transfer station.
Much of that funding was used to address a major erosion problem that was ordered by the DEP. The erosion was caused by stormwater flowing off the transfer station to the Powdermill Flood Control Dam pond and threatened to undermine the rail bed of the Pioneer Valley Railroad that is located adjacent to the transfer station.
One of the primary issues raised by members of the council was the lack of a gatekeeper to monitor usage at the facility.
Suckau said that the department would also use the remaining funds, $30,000 left in a transfer station bond issue, to address a requirement imposed by the state Department of Environmental Protection, installation of a gate and gatehouse.
“The gate has been cited as a condition of the tip lift by the DEP,” Suckau said.
