WESTFIELD – Several major developments initiated in 2014 will come to fruition in the early part of 2015, including single-stream recycling, slated to start Monday, and the return of the Granville Reservoir to the city’s drinking water supply.
Single-stream recycling is still a work in progress, but the concept is simple. The recently distributed 65-gallon burgundy barrels, which have a “Trash Only” sticker on the top lid, will become residents’ solid waste containers and the 96-gallon grey barrels will be used to collect recyclable materials.
The use of the smaller barrels for trash and the larger barrels for recyclable materials is a requirement of the state Department of Environmental Protection to “encourage” residents to increase the volume of material sent to the Municipal Recycling Facility in Springfield.
The city hopes that the single-stream recycling program substantially reduces the volume of solid waste trucked away from the Twiss Street transfer station and that it will result in a significant cost avoidance, or savings, in the city’s solid waste budget.
The City Council recently accepted a $100,000 DEP grant to help fund the purchase of the burgandy trash containers.
There are several issues to be resolved. Many senior residents had smaller grey containers, and do not want the 65-gallon container, especially those with the 45-gallon grey container. The city did not purchase any of the 45-gallon burgundy containers.
Another major issue is that the city does not have a sufficient number of trucks with articulated arms to left both the new and old containers. The city plans to rent several trucks while the fleet needs are assessed during the next several months. The long lead time for construction of the specialized trucks, about a year, could mean that the city rents trucks for the next 12 to 18 months.
There is also an ongoing assessment of municipal departments which could result in a major reorganization of the departmental structure and a shift of responsibilities. Consolidation of several departments, Public Works, Water and the Wastewater Treatment Plant, is being examined to determine if those functions can be managed, and financed, more efficiently.
The Twiss Street transfer station is under the control of the Board of Health, while trash and recycling collection is performed by the Public Works Department.
The Water Resource Department is also initiating the restart of the Water Treatment Plant in Southwick. That plant was taken offline nearly two years ago to upgrade the plant, replace the raw water transmission line which carries water from Granville Reservoir to the Treatment plant.
The reservoir was drained to facilitate replacement of the spillway, washed out during Tropical Storm Katrina, and to repair the “toe” of the earthen dam built in 1929 to create the Granville Reservoir.
Work on the treatment plant, which included installation of hydroelectric turbines which use the water coming down the raw-water line to generate electrical power, installation of a new section of that raw water line through the Granville Gorge, spillway and dam were completed several months ago, but it took time to refill the reservoir.
The treatment plant is designed to treat up to four million gallons of water a day, about two-thirds of the average daily water consumption in the city. The new transmission line installed during the project will carry about a million gallons of water a day than the line which was replaced.
The Water Commission had placed a water ban on the outdoor use of city water during the past two summers. The mandatory non-essential water use restriction began in June and was in effect through September 30.
