by Krishna Winston
Currently president of the Jonah Center Board and chair of Middletown’s Resource Recycling Advisory Commission, Krishna Winston has been committed to environmental conservation since long before recycling became mandatory in the State of Connecticut in 1991. She served on the task force that designed Middletown’s first recycling program. In October of this year she spent sixteen hours going door to door on Middletown’s north side to inform residents about the new co-collection program beginning in November.
The Context
Connecticut’s waste crisis became impossible to ignore once the MIRA trash-to-energy plant shut down in the summer of 2022, leaving 49 towns—representing about a third of the state’s trash—in the lurch. But the crisis has been in the making far longer. For decades the state DEP (now DEEP) has been setting targets for reducing waste, and time and again those targets have been missed. With more and more disposable and single-use items, along with packaging, much of it difficult or impossible to recycle, many residents’ trash carts are filled to overflowing. Because of contamination, single-stream recycling, originally intended to simplify and promote more recycling, has actually lowered the value of the material collected. To separate mixed recyclables into marketable commodities, material-recovery facilities (MRFs), like the one recently inaugurated by Murphy Road Recycling in Berlin’s industrial park, must be equipped with sophisticated and costly equipment imported from other countries. Whereas recycling once brought in some revenue, in recent years municipalities and hauling companies have been paying for recycling, and the cost keeps going up. Continue reading
After a long delay, the residents of Chatham Court (Portland Housing Authority) now have a sidewalk leading to Marlborough Street. This project, proposed in 2019 by former First Selectwoman Susan Bransfield and Portland’s Complete Streets Group, provides residents with pedestrian access to medical offices, food shopping, and more. We appreciate the initiative of current First Selectmen Ryan Curley and Public Works Director Ryan O’Halpin, who persuaded property owners on Riverside Street to grant easements for sidewalk construction and relocation of some utility poles.
The town was also previously awarded a Community Connectivity grant to provide better accessibility in the area of the Chatham Court apartments. (Photo at left.) This includes a new bus stop and sidewalk on Riverside Street and a short sections of Airline Avenue, Marlborough Street, High Street, and Freestone Avenue (Below is a map showing the larger area of these improvements.) The project will also replace badly damaged sidewalks along High Street going towards Valley View School and Portland High School as well as updating the sidewalk and ramps to be ADA compliant. There will be a redesigned pedestrian crosswalk and an updated signal at the complicated intersection of Marlborough Street (Rt. 66) & High Street. As shown below, this area is also significant because of the possibility of a future extension of the Air Line Trail across this intersection. Construction is planned for the fall of 2023. 
