Some Concord residents will have to head to Allenstown to dump their trash after the Concord transfer station on Old Turnpike Road made changes to its operations due to safety concerns.
At the Concord transfer station, people with dump trucks used to back up to a ramp and unload into a large trash bin below. Depending on what was being dumped and how full the trash bin was, some material could topple out.
“We’d be below with a bucket loader, holding it in the air to catch the overflow so that it doesn’t hit your mother-in-law driving by in her Prius,” Casella General Manager David Allen said at a recent Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting. “We’ve had close call after close call.”
The transfer station was built in the 1990s following the closure of Concord’s landfill and its operations are contracted out to Casella Waste Systems, which brought the dumping issue to the city’s attention.
Chip Chesley, director of Concord’s General Services Department, said the Concord station wasn’t designed to be used that way.
Now, Concord residents who want to discard materials using a dump truck or trailer have to go to the Allenstown transfer station, which is also run by Casella and better designed for that kind of use.
Recognizing the inconvenience of driving 15 minutes to the south, Casella offers a $25 discount per ton of trash. The Concord station charges $125 per ton of trash and stays open until 4 p.m., a half hour later than Allenstown and can handle any kind of waste. By comparison, Allenstown’s transfer station isn’t open on weekends while Concord’s is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
Concord residents need to set up an account with the Allenstown station.
Despite the changes, Chesley and Allenstown Administrator Derik Goodine said they haven’t heard any complaints from residents abiding by the new practice.
(Caitlin Andrews contributed to the reporting for this story. Jacob Dawson can be reached at 272-6414 ext. 8325, jdawson@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @jaked156.)