The NRRA Solid Waste Assessment Team (SWAT) after a 3 hour tour and discussion on January 21, 2015
"Dump Man", Carl Hultberg (TS attendant, Danbury, NH)
when he started in the local trash
the transfer station was a landfill still
standing on decades of old garbage
the danbury dump attendant's daily drill
heat up the compactor
open up the electronics box
remember everybody's name in town
their children pets the neighborhood talks
helping the townspeople most in need
master of the trash universally decreed
Outcomes and Next Steps
My hope is that this project will guide other rural New England towns to do similar redesigns of their Waste Transfer Station and encourage designers to apply these techniques and resources for their own projects. After over 100 hours of working on this project, I have come to understand the difficulties in balancing equipment, regulations, marketing, traffic patterns, environmental standards, labor and equipment efficiency, Town spending, community collaboration (especially with waste diversion), and ecological rehabilitation. Now that I have a stronger understanding of these elements and their relationships to one another, I would gladly assist in another Transfer Station redesign.
One other wonderful outcome arose from this project: I have been asked by the attendants to be the substitute attendant when either of the others are out!
I will be presenting this project at the Town Meeting in Andover March 10, 2015. It will be in the local newspaper and will be available both through the Town website and Facebook. Lastly, it will be printed in portfolio format and handed to the Town Administrator to keep in the records.
Full Report for the Beacon, Andover's local newspaper
"Dump Pickers", Carl Hultberg
they haunt the transfer station
now that the money age is over
searching for a meaning in the waste
like maybe--a broken lawnmower
if only our engines had been bigger
if we could just get the oil we need
why did we feel we had to create
so many new mouths to feed
they come in shifts
to see what's there
trash that materializes
as if--right out of thin air
lonely men can't stay at home
come to pull scrap and hob knob
but only one of them saw it coming
and--nailed down the dump job