For the most part, people bringing their trash to the transfer station, even in a small town such as Unity, take little notice of the people who work there, said Vanessa Keith, who has worked at the town’s Mica Mine Road facility since 1997 and now manages it.
Now, however, transfer station employees are considered essential workers, and their role is receiving new attention. Transfer stations have had to manage the potential hazards of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. With the public in need of guidance, not all of the guided have been warmly receptive.
While most people have taken in stride the changes Keith put in place, which included putting up a barrier to keep the public out of the staff’s work area, having people sort their own recycling, and, in the past several weeks, having staff wear masks, a few have been put out.
“I’ve had people question the masks: ‘You really think that’s doing anything?’ ” Keith said. “That’s pretty discouraging to hear. We’re all figuring things out. We don’t need to hear things like that.”
In Thetford, a transfer station patron barked at a couple of employees who weren’t wearing masks, a situation recounted in messages on the town’s Listserv. The patron penned an apology, but also noted that wearing a mask when working around the public was “the respectful thing to do.”
And in Canaan, Town Administrator Mike Samson has sent out sternly worded emails to keep town residents on the straight and narrow when dumping their trash and recycling. “It is totally unacceptable to be sick with any illness, use a tissue to blow your nose and then put it in with the recyclables,” he wrote in a March 24 message to residents. The text was all capitals, and red. Transfer station workers have to sort those recyclables, he noted. “If you want to ignore the threat of COVID, that is your risk. Don’t pass it on,” he wrote.