A quiet street is marked by Dump the Dump signs

Jennifer Davis-Muller and Steve Muller (Photo by Mary Powers)

By Samantha Henry and Justin Maher

Turning down the quiet street in a small neighborhood, the grass is green and people are outside mowing their lawns. The houses are well maintained and a man-made waterfall decorates one lawn.

But one thing seems out of place on the lawns of these houses on Pleasant Hill Road in Franklin, Conn. - bright yellow signs dug into the dirt, bearing the words “DUMP THE DUMP.”

At the end of the road sits a three-story blue house with a small garden, a horse, a donkey, a dog, and a family. And about 1,500 feet away, is a proposed site for an ash landfill.

Steve Muller, who lives in this home, said that he worked hard to knock down the trees and build his home and his family.

“[The Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority] could buy our house, they could tear it down, and they could think that’s OK,” Muller said.

Muller emphasized that the memories and monumental effort of building his family’s house from the foundation up cannot be replaced just by purchasing another one with the funds from a CRRA check, even if that outcome, one of the better ones possible, materializes.

“I could sell the house to another mother and look at her and tell her the water’s fine,” said Jennifer Davis-Muller, who also lives in the house. “But I couldn’t do that.”

On this proposal, opinion in Franklin is negative. In a referendum, the town of about 1,800 voted. With a 4:1 voting ratio, despite the insidiously-awkward phrasing of the ballot question, town residents opposed the ash landfill.

Residents also succeeded in getting a bill introduced in the Connecticut General Assembly seeking to ban the landfill from Franklin.

Major concerns from the opponents of the dump are the traffic – about 60 trucks each day – the threat to the biodiversity in the area, possible leaks from the dump, and the threats to agriculture, businesses and archaeological evidence.

The landfill would be built near the Shetucket River.

“Why go ruin another piece of land when we already have containment,” said Susan Allen of Dump the Dump.

Allen and other members of Dump the Dump have suggested that the landfill be built in nearby Putnam, Conn. According to Allen, a current landfill in Putnam has enough room to operate for years and she believes that it could be expanded.

“Use 10 to 12 years to find something better,” Davis-Muller said. “People are getting creative – we have electric cars.” Davis-Muller suggests that the town lets people work to think about another option and use Putnam for the ash landfill until then.

In those 10 to 12 years bought by the Putnam facility, the people of Franklin hope the state would find less intrusive waste management strategies. A Zero-waste policy is the No.1 option that Davis-Muller and Allen would like to see go through. Another idea was that if the ash was heated further, it could be turned from a powdery consistency to a glass-like material that could be used as a component of asphalt.

Davis-Muller said that when the dump proposal was first unveiled, CRRA had a big meeting with the town. She said CRRA was adamant about having many small tables set up with representatives to field questions, rather than having a press-conference-style meeting, where everyone would hear every question and every answer.

“If this is such a good thing,” said Davis-Muller, “then let’s have transparency.”