Pauline Griffis packed her trunk full of neatly folded cardboard and a few donation bags before heading to the Allenstown Transfer Station on Tuesday morning.
She had heard the dump returned to normal operations last week and was eager to get rid of the recycling she’d been collecting.
But, as Griffis and several others learned upon arriving at the transfer station, full recycling services have not yet been reinstated, although trash can now be thrown away in the dumpsters once again.
“I felt like, oh my god, I just got that loaded up,” Griffis said. “Obviously, I’m bummed, but I understand everything is so crazy right now.”
Trash disposal in the dumpsters has resumed thanks to a petition warrant article that allocated $150,000 for that purpose. Curbside collection was an initial casualty of the tight budget, and the transfer station had to shut down both trash and recycling services last spring when the town voted for a default budget.
People who stopped by the transfer station on Tuesday morning shared how thrilled they were to see the facility return to normal operating hours. The past year saw limited hours and a reduction in the types of materials people could bring.
“This part is great — it’s great the dump is open. It’s a start,” Griffis said. “I like to bring my donations here, and you’ve still got the donation barrel, so that’s good.”
Recycling, however, will be slower to resume.
Another petition warrant article placed $25,000 in a newly-created recycling fund intended to revive that service. So far, people can bring their aluminum cans to the transfer station, but beyond that, the Highway Department is still looking at how to bring back recycling in the most cost-effective manner.
However, these trash and recycling services may not be here to stay, warned Selectman Kathleen Pelissier, who led both the trash and recycling petitions.
“Because the $150K was designated by a petition warrant article to fund the dump, that only funds it for this year,” she said. “The Board of Selectmen, I’m hopeful, will propose it in the actual operating budget now that they realize it’s supported by the residents, but there’s no guarantee, so we may have to go through this process again to keep it running.”
Pelissier’s husband, Chad Pelissier, is the road agent for the Allenstown Highway Department. She said he’s looking into different options for recycling.
Sean Ford, who dropped off some items at the transfer station on Tuesday morning, said he’d like to see the town reinstate curbside pick-up. He’s currently paying Casella Waste Systems to collect his garbage and recycling from outside his home. He’s also been driving half an hour to Manchester, where his mother lives, to dispose of large recyclable materials that don’t fit in his designated bin.
“It’s a sore subject with me,” he said. “The town is, for lack of a better term, they need to pull their head out of their backside and start taking care of the people who don’t get any other services in town. The only service I get in town is trash, and they took that away.”
Ford lives on a public road, so he also receives plow services, but he said that’s the extent of it.
“I live far enough away that I’ll never get sewer. I’ll never get water. But the $10,000 a year I pay in taxes, I shouldn’t have to pay an additional 50 bucks a month for garbage pickup.”
Nancy Beaulieu, like Griffis, brought cardboard to the dump to recycle on Tuesday before learning she wouldn’t be able to do so. Beaulieu, whose family gets their trash picked up curbside by Casella, will not start bringing trash to the dump, in part because of the hours.
“We don’t have that convenience to come here on weekends, so we’ll pay Casella to pick it up,” she said. “But the recycling and other metals we’ll bring here.”
She ended up having to throw out the recycling she brought to the transfer station.
“I think recycling is a big one for us, for me, anyway,” she said in reference to what she’d like to see next. Still, she said with a grin, she’s really happy to see the station open again.
Griffis, for her part, will keep adding to her large pile of cardboard at home until the time comes when the dump will accept that material.
“I’m 70 years old, so obviously I grew up in the hippie tree-hugger days,” she said. “I still am, in many ways — I walk in the woods, I hug a tree. I don’t care. I care about the planet. I care about what we do to it.”
She said she would like the Board of Selectmen to prioritize the interests of Allenstown residents, particularly when it comes to these services.
“It would be nice to have people who, all of them, care about the town as well,” she said. “Listen to the people and what they want for the town, and then people wouldn’t complain so much about if they have to pay a little more for something. But when they’re saying taxes are going up and everything, taxes are going up everywhere. But still, when it happens and you say I’m not getting anything for it, I understand that too.”
The Allenstown Transfer Station is open on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 7-10 a.m. and on Saturdays from 8 a.m. – 3 p.m.
