Gov. Ned Lamont criticized state lawmakers for failing to approve his plan to reduce the amount of trash Connecticut sends out of state. The state currently ships about 860,000 tons of trash to landfills in Pennsylvania and Ohio, contributing to what Lamont’s administration has called a “waste crisis.” The governor signed a watered-down version of the plan, and took the rare step of writing a letter criticizing the bill.
Lamont wrote that the legislation addresses only 5 percent of the trash problem, while raising electric rates to subsidize trash-burning energy plants and shifting the cost of trash disposal to taxpayers. In the letter, Lamont said the $5 million in subsidies for existing trash-burning plants will raise costs for electric customers, without guaranteeing the subsidies will keep those plants open. The bill raises the price Eversource and United Illuminating are required to pay trash-burning energy plants from 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 3 cents. The electric companies are required to buy 4 percent of their electricity from those plants.
Lamont and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes urged lawmakers this year to create an “extended producer responsibility” for packaged goods, boosting food scrap diversion programs and imposing a fee on municipal waste headed for out-of-state landfills. They said those changes could cut about 44 percent of the waste Connecticut is exporting since the MIRA trash-burning plant in Hartford’s South Meadows shut down in July, taking offline a facility that burned nearly 740,000 tons of trash per year.