On August 20, 2026, six board members of the Northwest Resource Recovery Authority, an attorney, and a consultant hired by the NRRA held a special meeting in the offices of Goshen town hall, a tiny town in Litchfield County with a population of a little over 3,000. They were meeting specifically to hold an executive session “to discuss legal matters related to hauler authorizations.”

The NRRA is in its second month of managing the Torrington transfer station, a transfer station for trash in the Northwest corner’s largest city, after Connecticut’s Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA), which previously owned and operated the station, officially dissolved in 2025 following a wind-down beginning in 2023 under the MIRA Dissolution Authority (MDA).

MIRA had previously operated Hartford’s trash-to-energy plant, and its dissolution meant much of Connecticut’s trash, particularly in the Northwest corner, would be shipped by rail to dump sites in Pennsylvania and Ohio after being cycled through various transfer stations throughout the state. But the closure of MIRA also presented a problem for municipalities that had existing contracts to ship their trash to MIRA’s trash to energy plant – municipal leaders had to make new arrangements and new contracts for trash hauling and dumping.

Having to ship trash out of state added to already-increasing tipping fees for haulers, increasing the overall cost burden for both towns and residents to have their trash picked up. Since 2019, tipping fees have risen by $56 per ton across the state.

The NRRA was created, in part, to prevent those costs from rising further in a sparsely populated part of the state that encompasses a large geographic and largely wealthy area, but only accounts for very small percentage of trash in Connecticut.

An offshoot of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments (NHCOG) with its 21 member municipalities, the NRRA, at this point in its existence, counts only eight towns as members who are actually using the services provided at the Torrington transfer station – the rest of the towns in the area have largely signed with private hauler USA Waste & Recycling, including the most populated municipalities like Torrington and Litchfield. USA Waste delivers its trash to its own transfer station in Winsted.

The NRRA was born out of a controversial budget rat in the Connecticut General Assembly’s 2025 budget implementer that wrested the Torrington transfer station away from USA Waste, who had made a multi-million dollar offer on the property, and placed it under the purview of Connecticut’s Department of Administrative Services (DAS). DAS essentially kept the transfer station running by continuing with the third-party waste hauler who had been operating the station under the MDA since at least 2021, Enviro Express.

No one claimed responsibility for the budget rat; the last-minute amendment to the budget appeared confusing even for Rep. Maria Horn, D-Salisbury, who advocated for the amendment but admitted on the House floor that she was unclear on the details. Even the municipalities that would comprise the NRRA were reportedly unaware that this language was coming.

“That is not the way I would have done it,” Horn said of the budget language in an interview with Inside Investigator. “I don’t know for sure how it got in there but it wasn’t me, nor was it any of the regional legislators, because I have spoken to all of them.”

Rep. Horn says that she and other regional lawmakers had been in conversation with municipalities in the Northwest Corner at the time concerning trash hauling, particularly sending garbage out of state, and the growing size of a “particular hauler.”

“They were increasingly concerned about monopolies growing,” Horn said. “I had a lot of first selectmen across the political spectrum in my district who were very concerned about that, and very worried that the dust was going to settle in a couple years and they would have no choice except to take whatever is offered to them by one particular hauler.”

The budget rat effectively undercut USA Waste’s offer to the MIRA Dissolution Authority to purchase the transfer station for $3.25 million – money which could then be put toward remediating the defunct trash-to-energy plant in Hartford. Private ownership of the transfer station, supporters argued, would also have the added benefit of sending property tax dollars to the struggling city of Torrington.

The MDA had accepted the offer, but before the sale could go through, the budget rat sent the transfer station to DAS for one year, before transferring ownership to a resource authority to be created by the NHCOG. In public testimony before the MDA, the towns in the Northwest corner were divided on whether the transfer station should remain in public hands or be sold to USA Waste. 

A year later, the General Assembly approved conveyance of the Torrington transfer station to the NRRA, which had been officially formed in October 2025 with the City of Torrington as its first member community counting three board members – including then-Mayor Elinor Carbone, and, oddly, Dan Jerram, first selectman of New Hartford, who was made board chair.

Conveyance of the transfer station was passed on a bipartisan basis in the House of Representatives, 115-33, and in the Senate, 33-2. Despite the lopsided approval of the transfer, Republicans representing the communities split on whether this was a smart move. Rep. Jay Case, R-Torrington, vociferously opposed the transfer; his colleague, Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Barkhamsted, supported it, as did Republican Senate Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.

Less than a month later, DAS formally handed over control of the Torrington transfer station to the NRRA, but the new authority wasn’t fully prepared to take over and wanted more time.

In 2024, Dan Jerram represented eleven towns in the NHCOG region in asking to join the Housatonic Resource Recovery Authority (HRRA), which handles trash in the Danbury region. The HRRA board, however, indicated there were “too many unknown factors” at the time, including the status of the Torrington transfer station and how the HRRA would manage an “extended geographic footprint,” according to meeting minutes.

In March 2026, the NRRA Board voted unanimously to send a letter to DAS hoping to extend DAS’s interim operation of the Torrington transfer station another year until 2027, the same year that many of the member towns had contracts with MIRA. The offer to allow DAS another year of operating the station, however, fell on deaf ears.

“We pushed to try to keep the state running it for another year while we got organized, but we didn’t get that option,” said NRRA board member and Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgeway. “You need state support because it is a state problem going back a long time.”

Nevertheless, the Torrington Transfer Station is up and running and receiving trash.

“We have contracts with MIRA until 2027. They then switch to DAS, the state. They’re the ones that decided, we’ll orphan them,” said NRRA Board Chairman and Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand. “People are saying, ‘we can’t believe you got this far in two months.’”

But that’s not to say that everything has smoothly for the start-up authority: several Freedom of Information complaints have been filed against the NRRA, raising transparency issues; many of the towns in the region have signed long-term contracts with USA Waste, greatly diminishing the amount of trash that will go to the Torrington transfer station and potentially escalating tipping fees, and Dan Jerram, who had been quarterbacking the NRRA since its inception resigned from the board in August.

The question that has dogged the NRRA since the budget rat first appeared in the 2025 budget, however, is whether the numbers will ultimately add up so that the NRRA can be a self-supporting authority, or whether it will require continued state support. 

Hearst columnist Dan Haar, questioned the wisdom of state lawmakers opting to have the state to pay several million – and potentially more – to keep the Torrington transfer station in public hands, as opposed to receiving several million dollars and boosting Torrington’s tax rolls. 

A “rat” is a term given to language snuck into the budget during the last days or hours of the legislative session meant to specifically benefit some individual, company, or public entity. In the case of the NRRA and the Torrington transfer station, however, whether anyone will ultimately benefit is up for debate.

“The Numbers are Absolutley Sustainable.”

During debate over the conveyance of the Torrington transfer station to the NRRA, Rep. Kurt Vail, R-Stafford, who was one of the few opposed to the transfer, questioned Rep. Lucy Dathan, D-New Canaan, head of the Government Oversight Committee, on whether the NRRA and the transfer station will require a taxpayer subsidy going forward in order to continue operations.

“Is there going to be a state subsidy to help support this?” Vail asked. “How are they going to operate this property if they have no money to operate it with? I’ve heard there will be money put aside.”

Dathan yielded the floor to Rep. Horn for an answer: “There is no money contemplated in this,” Horn said. “The numbers are absolutely sustainable long term, and the state will not be required to subsidize this transfer station. It’s fully backed by another well-established entity, the Housatonic Resource Recovery Authority.”

The question of a state subsidy was a fair one. Horn’s statement aside, there was no solid answer at the time and there likely won’t be an answer until the NRRA works out its own long-term budget, tipping fees, grants, and possibly any other revenue. 

“It is nobody’s intention to pour money into a hole forever,” Horn said to Inside Investigator.

For years, MIRA had been subsidizing the tipping fees for municipal solid waste throughout the state. MIRA’s own reports and presentations note that without the subsidy – which in 2023 reduced tipping fees by $43.73 per ton – municipal solid waste tipping fees would not be “competitive with alternatives.”

Even with 2023’s massive subsidy, MIRA’s tipping fees exceeded the “opt-out” price point at which municipalities could ditch their contracts and find alternatives, including towns in the Northwest Hills region like Torrington, Harwinton, and Litchfield, all of whom signed with USA Waste.

And since those towns, whose combined population is nearly 50,000 residents, were no longer delivering trash to the Torrington station, the station began to require an operating subsidy because the tipping fees from the remaining towns weren’t enough to cover the cost. 

The MIRA Dissolution Authority – the entity created to wind down MIRA – found the Torrington station would require a $1.3 million subsidy in 2025, and $1.37 million in 2026.

“MIRA, as we’ve now undone their books, was horribly run,” Horn said. “Bloated overhead costs, their whole structure needed to be redone, and NRRA has been doing that work.”

A June 18, 2025, letter from NHCOG Executive Director Robert Phillips and former Torrington Mayor Elinor Carbone to the MDA contained term sheets with projected budgets for the NRRA to operate the transfer station, which showed losses of $1.1 million in fiscal year 2026 and $1.1 million in 2027.

When the Torrington station was placed under DAS control following the 2025 budget rat, DAS received $2 million in federal grant funds to keep the operation going with Enviro Express who, according to state open records, received $1.75 million.

Since their startup, the NRRA has received state funds in the form of startup money and municipal waste grants from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). The NRRA was granted $100,000 from the General Fund, $350,000 through DEEP’s Sustainable Materials Management Grant program, and then $500,000 in pass through grants from the Office of Policy and Management, for which the committee thanked Rep. Horn for her work securing the funds. 

The NRRA is receiving another $200,000 from “a new regional service grant to NHCOG,” according to meeting minutes.

Some of that grant money was for strategic planning services. To that end, the NRRA conducted a search and hired consultant Rachel Oster of Diversion Strategies, at a cost of roughly $195,000 drawn from two separate grants. Oster is now heading up the budget and monitoring operations for the transfer station, including getting approval at the August special meeting to be able to spend up to $3,000 for routine maintenance at the facility, like cleaning out the drains.

NRRA is also backed up by the NHCOG, with the COG sharing their contracted attorney, David Zabel, and their Deputy Director, Rista Malanca, who sat in on the meetings and executive sessions and helped in finding and recommending Oster.

During the same July monthly meeting of the NHCOG in which part of Diversion Strategies’ contract was approved from a state grant, members were also presented with an agreement that the COG would pay for the NRRA’s scale house operator and the COG would be reimbursed “if and when funds become reasonably available.”

Some members expressed concern that they were only presented with the document shortly before the meeting, and “questioned whether NHCOG could be left paying costs that should be NRRA expenses.”

“Rista Malanca explained that the intent was for NRRA to pay for those expenses, with NHCOG potentially paying initially and being reimbursed through grant funds or tip-fee revenues,” the minutes state. “Dan Jerram stated that the agreement functioned as a pass-through and was necessary to keep operations moving.”

The agreement was eventually approved during the meeting after members were granted more time to review it, with only Winsted opposed and Burlington abstaining.

Although the HRRA declined to accept the NRRA towns into its authority in 2024, it did approve allowing HRRA Executive Director Jennifer Heaton-Jones to assist the new start-up. 

To that end, the HRRA extended their Regional Waste and Recycling Agreement to include the NRRA member towns, and the NRRA entered a memorandum of understanding with Interstate Waste Services (IWS), a large hauler and transfer station operator contracted with HRRA. 

Heaton-Jones says HRRA’s outreach to the NRRA was “based on a desire to share our expertise and support neighboring communities as they address increasingly complex waste management challenges.”

“Regional cooperation benefits municipalities and their residents by providing access to experience, resources, and proven programs,” Heaton-Jones wrote in an email. “The goal is to provide high-quality services, create efficiencies through regional collaboration, and help municipalities secure reliable and cost-effective waste and recycling solutions. We have seen firsthand the benefits that a regional waste authority can provide, and we want neighboring communities to have access to those same opportunities.”

Members of the NRRA also pointed out that with HRRA and IWS’s involvement, trash from the Torrington transfer station is no longer shipped to Keystone, Pennsylvania, and is instead sent to a trash-to-energy plant in Bridgeport, which saves on costs.

Cornwall First Selectman Ridgeway points out that before MIRA, many of the towns in the Northwest Hills were part of the HRRA but left to join MIRA in its first iteration as the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, something he believes was ultimately a mistake in the long run.

“Looking back that was a mistake for us to leave that organization [HRRA] because they give our neighbors better service and lower tipping fees,” Ridgeway said. 

“There’s strength in numbers,” Chairman Rand said. “That’s part of being a member of a group.”

HRRA is bigger and obviously more experienced than NRRA. Teaming up with the HRRA, which encompasses Danbury and surrounding towns in Fairfield County and beyond, certainly works for the NRRA for the time being. But how strong NRRA’s numbers end up being will depend on buy-in from towns in the Northwest and right now most of the contracts are with USA Waste.

IWS is currently operating the Torrington transfer station, and while Oster indicated that NRRA will eventually put out a request for proposals to receive competitive bids, Zabel stated an RFP wasn’t necessarily required.

“One of the advantages of an authority like this, it’s not always whether one bid is lower than somebody else, the authority has the option to do what’s in the best interest of the public going forward,” Zabel said. “It hasn’t been decided whether it will be an RFP or some other bidding process, or some ‘tell us what the contractor is going to be doing,’ that’s all we look at.”

It’s not the only advantage to forming an authority. Under Connecticut statute, Councils of Governments can handle recycling and solid waste disposal, although none of them want to, nor would they be properly staffed or resourced for it. Resource recovery authorities, on the other hand, have much more expansive powers that a COG does not possess, including the ability to take on debt by issuing bonds to be paid with revenue for one of its facilities, or even a mortgage of one of those facilities.

Supporters of the legislation and of the NRRA say that creating the new trash authority was necessary to prevent a monopoly on services in the Northwest Hills by creating a competitive market, but whether the NRRA will be able to compete, and whether it will actually lower prices absent some kind of state support, is up for debate.

“I would not support an ongoing support for this, but I am willing to give them a shot,” Horn said. “And I can tell you, NRRA’s existence already paying off to the extent that it is enabling some towns who chose not to participate in NRRA to get deals from haulers, because NRRA is creating a competitive marketplace.”

“Monopoly”

When talking about a state “subsidy” to keep the NRRA afloat and able to compete with private haulers in the area, it should be kept in mind that not all support flowing from the state government comes in the form of a budget line item directly out of the General Fund. As indicated before, MIRA was subsidizing tipping fees for years to remain competitive and still ultimately collapsed.

Although the NRRA is currently being aided by $100,000 from the General Fund, support for municipal waste across the state largely comes from grants that are many times pass-through grants from the federal government.

For instance, the HRRA receives roughly half its little more than $1 million in revenue from program fees, with the rest largely comprised of grants and municipal reimbursements for things like regional hazardous waste removal events, according to a review of their audit reports. In 2025, HRRA received only $112,485 in pass through grants from the State of Connecticut through DEEP for conservation and development in 2025.

Right now, the NRRA is largely operating on pass-through grants. Their MOU with HRRA is allowing them to charge competitive tipping fees for the Torrington Transfer Station at roughly $120 per ton for now. As of their July 16 meeting, the NRRA reported the Torrington station was receiving waste from Canaan/Falls Village, North Canaan, Colebrook, Cornwall, Norfolk, Salisbury, and Sharon, along with a couple small private haulers. 

Those seven municipalities have a combined population of a little more than 16,000 people, according to the 2020 Census numbers, less than half that of Torrington alone, and that is where the numbers get more difficult. 

Although Torrington and its former mayor Elinor Carbone initially spearheaded the NRRA, the city was already locked into an agreement with USA Waste. Under current Mayor Molly Spino, Torrington signed a 10-year contract with USA Waste, which brings the trash to their own transfer station in Winsted. 

As indicated before, Harwinton also signed a 10-year deal with USA Waste, as did Litchfield. Even the town of Goshen, whose first selectman sits on the NRRA board, signed a 10-year contract with USA Waste in July 2026, just as the NRRA took possession of the Torrington Transfer Station.

Winsted, Barkhamsted, and New Hartford use USA Waste as a hauling company and have their own regional transfer station in New Hartford called Regional Refuse Disposal District 1. 

What that means is that currently very little trash will be making its way to the Torrington Transfer Station and, absent a continuing agreement with HRRA and more grant money or government subsidies, maintaining a competitive tipping fee at the transfer station will be difficult; there just won’t be enough tonnage to support operations.

Winsted First Selectman Todd Arcelaschi is not only the administrator for RDD1 but also worked for MIRA as a billing analyst and, under the MDA, a revenue account handling the monthly billing. Arcelaschi opposed transferring the Torrington station to the NRRA. In written testimony, Arcelaschi pointed out that even under MIRA, the Torrington station was projected to operate at a $1.6 million loss in 2026, and argued that with families struggling with other costs, the state should not create something that will require an “ongoing public subsidy.”

“For a transfer station to work you need to be able to have additional revenue other than tip fees, which is one of my concerns with Torrington Transfer Station,” Arcelaschi said in an interview. “They’re going to be relying mainly on tip fees to operate and that’s very, very difficult.”

MIRA, for instance, not only had tip fees, but also property lease revenue, revenue from solar fields, revenue from the trash to energy plant, metal sales, and the reserve account, all of which helped them maintain the lower tips fees. Arcelaschi says, likewise, RDD1 makes money through metal sales and “tag sales,” in which they pull out items that can be sold.

“Torrington Transfer Station isn’t set up to be able to pull out the metal from their loads, because they just don’t have the space, so they can’t make any money on metals. They can’t make money selling items that some of the other transfer stations make,” Arcelaschi said. “Without an additional form of revenue, a transfer station is going to have a tough time relying on tip fees from towns or curbside pickup for residents, and that’s going to be tough for anybody to get over.”

Every authority’s financial structure is unique,” Heaton-Jones said. “HRRA utilizes a combination of revenue sources to operate the organization and does not rely solely on tip fees. Success depends on having a financial model that is sustainable over the long term and capable of supporting the services the NRRA chooses to provide.”

 “Revenue can come from a variety of sources, including grants, hauler registration and permitting fees, tip fees, and other funding mechanisms,” Heaton-Jones continued. “The key is ensuring that revenues are sufficient to support both operational needs and long-term organizational goals.”

However, the near ubiquity of USA Waste in the Northwest Hills area is largely the reason the NRRA was created and pushed through the General Assembly despite potential issues down the road; town leaders and state lawmakers worried about a potential monopoly on trash services in the region, which would allow USA Waste to control prices. 

The fear was that even if USA Waste’s prices are better than what anyone else can offer now, if they controlled the Torrington Transfer Station as well, they would eventually start increasing prices.

“We truly believe, and I truly believe, some things are better done by government than by private parties where you’re just talking about ‘how much money can I make?’” Zabel said. “At the end of the day, if you don’t have a public option, in ten years who’s to say that waste haulers are now three times what they should have been?”

The NRRA’s contracted consultant, Rachel Oster, says that one way to look at the current state of things is that the NRRA is already working; by creating a public alternative, she says, it drove USA Waste to offer long-term contracts with favorable rates to municipalities in the area. It created competition.

“Even though Torrington did leave, the reality is they would have never received that better deal if the NRRA hadn’t taken over this transfer station,” Oster said. “So, the market is already responding to having a public entity in place.”

According to Harwinton First Selectman Michael Criss, USA Waste’s 10-year contract offered an opt-out and the ability to match rates if NRRA’s rate is lower.

“I was 100 percent against the Northwest COG getting involved in any type of regionalized trash. I understand the intent, which was to ensure there wasn’t a monopoly on trash,” Criss said. “The NRRA, I just don’t think it’s a viable option; I don’t think the rates are going to be stabilized enough to make it worthwhile for towns to participate, but time will tell.”

While the favorable terms reached between USA Waste and Harwinton, for instance, lends credence to the idea that NRRA is creating market competition forces, Arcelaschi takes a different view: that if the NRRA can’t manage competitive rates, it will allow private companies to increase their rates while still coming in at a lower cost.

“A lot of people are concerned about USA becoming a monopoly, and I will admit that out here in the Northwest Corner that’s about it,” Arcelaschi said, adding the Rocco’s handles Winsted, but pretty much every other private hauler has either been bought out by USA Waste or went out of business. “USA is big, but they can do it cheaper than the towns can.”

Arcelaschi said that when Winsted went out to bid for trash hauling services, the three private offers they received ranged from $102 to $116 per ton; at the time, MIRA was charging $131 per ton. He said, USA Waste wasn’t even the lowest bidder.

“Everybody says we need the public option for competitive advantage. In theory, that’s correct, but the public option is much more expensive than the private market,” Arcelaschi said. “If the private market is so far under the public option, then the public option is actually inflating the private market prices. Because they can go higher and still be under the MIRA number.”

“Yes, there could be a concern that rates may skyrocket once the public option is gone, but that’s not the case right now,” Arcelaschi continued.

Oster, however, says that NRRA offers a more long-term solution to the areas trash problems, can offer competitive rates, and can be more focused on the state’s “really progressive goals” around recycling and sharing resources between towns; “It’s not just the favorable tipping rates we can provide, but it’s also the long-term planning and how can we provide infrastructure for these towns.”

“Private haulers don’t typically focus on how they can create sustainable solutions for the municipalities, they’re looking at generating revenue internally,” Oster said. “So, this authority is looking at ‘how do we manage costs and create a forward-looking plan for the next ten to twenty years,’ and that’s the allure of joining the authority.”

Criss ultimately puts the onus of responsibility on the state for, starting with MIRA, creating a situation in which there are concerns about a monopoly because the state has not offered any “long-term, viable option,” to what he says is a state problem.

“This is just a neglected issue by the state,” Criss said. “They’re not doing anything to stop the monopolies of trash hauling. You’ve got these large companies coming in, gobbling up the independents, charging rates that are high, but there’s no one paying attention, there’s no one from the state-level to say, wait a minute, you can’t just have two trash haulers in the state of Connecticut.” 

“They’re leaving it up to the towns, and that’s why you have these loose knockoffs that are running around trying to form trash authorities to try to solve the problem,” Criss continued.

“A Hollow Entity”

Despite being the founding member of the NRRA and including New Hartford First Selectman Dan Jerram as a representative, Torrington has backed out of the organization, continuing to work with USA Waste by building on a contract they signed in 2022. In comments to Goshen News, Torrington Mayor Molly Spino cited transparency issues with the NRRA, including conversations she heard second-hand, a failure to post meeting minutes, and an overall “lack of communication.”

Transparency has been an issue for the NRRA starting, naturally, with the budget rat in 2025 and followed by the legislation in 2026 conveying the transfer station to the NRRA, which, according to anyone watching, existed in name only. On the floor of the House, Rep. Jay Case, R-Torrington, questioned who the members were, the absence of meeting minutes, no website, and an overall lack of any public information on who or what the NRRA was.

“The NRRA is a hollow entity — currently, it has no funds, no employees, no equipment, no mailing address, and no office. It has not produced a plan to DAS, the legislature (despite requests), or the public to operate or maintain the transfer station,” USA Waste wrote in a memorandum opposing conveyance of the transfer station. “NRRA cannot and will not generate the necessary revenues to financially sustain the operations and maintenance of the facility.”

In the short period of NRRA’s existence, it now has had three Freedom of Information complaints against it filed with the Freedom of Information Commission regarding a lack of meeting minutes, a lack of votes on adding new member communities, and the authority’s either refusal or inability to provide purported video of the organization’s meetings.

The complaints were filed by attorneys representing USA Waste, who have been watching the organization closely. However, the complaints are not without merit.

According to the organization’s own bylaws, new member towns may be added to the NRRA “upon adoption of an ordinance,” and “upon a majority vote,” of the NRRA. 

However, there is no record in NRRA’s meeting minutes of any vote or approval process taking place as the organization grew from only Torrington to now include nine other towns. According to meeting minutes, Salisbury, Goshen, and Norfolk were added as board members “by acclamation.”

Many of the early meetings were also not noticed to the public as required under both FOI laws and the NRRA’s own bylaws; agendas do not include materials for the meetings so that the public could view them. Instead, the documents had to be specifically requested.

The lack of votes approving new member municipalities and the lack of meeting notice resulted in two complaints filed with the FOIC. 

According to a June 4 letter to the FOIC requesting the cases be consolidated and fast-tracked, attorney David S. Hardy of Carmody, Torrance, Sandak, and Hennessy LLP, wrote that, “NRRA is poised to take actions in the near term affecting the public based on decisions purportedly made at meetings where the public was unlawfully denied the opportunity to attend.”

“Should NRRA consummate transactions on behalf of the public based on decisions and actions declared to be illegal after the fact, available remedies may no longer be adequate,” Hardy continued.

However, it is also meeting minutes themselves that are possibly more problematic. For seven special meetings held between October 2025 and April 2026, the meeting minutes were posted retroactively by the NRRA during their June 1, 2026, meeting.

Claiming that those meeting minutes were still in draft form and needed to be approved by the board members, “Chairman Jerram noted for the record that he has reviewed all of the minutes and listened to all of the recordings,” before offering his overview of what happened during the meetings in question.

Jerram and others then offered amendments to the minutes – including that Salisbury, Goshen, and Norfolk were added as members – before the board voted to approve them, essentially backdating meeting minutes over six months. Those meeting minutes are now officially listed on the NRRA’s website.

USA Waste requested the recordings and, while the request was acknowledged, the video recordings were not produced. According to emails obtained by Inside Investigator, when attorneys requested simple confirmation that the recordings exist, they were met with silence. USA Waste then filed a third FOI complaint.

“NRRA purported to reconstruct minutes of past meetings based on audio recordings of those meeting,” USA Waste’s June 25, 2026, FOI complaint stated. “NRRA has refused to state whether the recordings exist and has not complied with the request.” The recordings were finally delivered to USA Waste on September 25

During the July 16, 2026, NRRA meeting, Dan Jerram submitted his resignation letter to the NRRA and stepped down as chairman. In comments to his own board of selectmen, Jerram said it was “time for a member town to take on the chairmanship.” 

Jerram noted that although New Hartford does not receive services from NRRA – the town, instead, uses RDD1 – the town could still appoint someone to serve on the NRRA board and asked if anyone was interested in serving.

No one volunteered, and the matter was tabled for a future meeting.

“We Wanted to Preserve the Right of a Public Place”

“We need a better package here so we can understand why we’re going to turn away $3.25 million dollars for this state, pay another $2 million to help run it, on top of the $350,000 we’ve already given to get the process started,” Case said. “We’re talking about trash? This isn’t a clean process.”

Although many were confused as to why state lawmakers would eschew $3.2 million and, instead, spend $2 million for DAS to keep it going, and then send over $1 million to a start-up resource authority which, at the time, appeared more of an entity only on paper, Curtis Rand is upfront: “We wanted it. We wanted to preserve the right of a public place. Otherwise, the alternative was pretty limited.”

Despite the expedited timeline due to DAS transferring the Torrington station to them sooner than they would have preferred, both Rand and Oster say they are up and running and getting interest from surrounding towns. Whether the NRRA will be able to balance out the money situation when it comes to expenses, tip fees, and possible future grants or state support is too early to tell, but Zabel says, “that is the intent.”

“That’s why they’ve hired someone to do some strategic planning,” Zabel said. “All these small towns have shown amazing flexibility in their ability to get stuff done, and that’s the hope that they will be able to do that, and that’s why this next year is so important to figure out how that will happen. Because the concern is that if you don’t maintain a public option, you’re never getting one back.”

But keeping that public option will probably be the most challenging aspect, given the low number of municipalities sending trash to the Torrington station, and the overall situation with trash in Connecticut. MIRA, with a hefty staff of well-paid employees and a board of politically connected members, was forced to subsidize tipping fees to compete with private industry and ultimately failed.

“The Northwest COG didn’t really listen to me, because I am a COG member,” Arcelaschi said. “I used to do the billing [for MIRA], I knew how much we took in, and I know how much we were spending to send it out of state, and it’s just not economically feasible, and they still said, ‘well, we don’t want USA being a monopoly.’”

Under the legislation that transferred the Torrington station to NRRA, if the new authority fails, it will go back to DAS, and the department will have to figure out what to do with it from there.

“They have to make it work, they have to get the volume, but they’re working really hard to do that,” Horn said. “My big commitment is to give them a chance to try to make this work. I do not want to sit here and pour money into it, and, mind you, I’m quite clear that OPM and the executive branch would not support pouring money into it every year.”

“In terms of getting something up and running, it is very much consistent with and aligned with DEEP policy and general executive branch policies in terms of creating marketplace and creating alternatives for solid waste management.”

The NRRA does have several positive aspects going for it, however: support from the NHCOG, support from the HRRA, and finally support – so far – from the state General Assembly, which passed the legislation on bipartisan basis.

Oster is currently working on the budget for NRRA and the Torrington transfer station, although it remains a work in progress, it does include reaching a host-city agreement with Torrington that would essentially offer a payment in lieu of property taxes. According to NRRA’s numbers, the tax assessment on the transfer station would be $12,448.79.

Jennifer Heaton-Jones also sees a future possibility of merging the HRRA with their smaller neighboring authority to the north. 

“I would not rule out the possibility of HRRA expanding its municipal membership in the future,” Heaton-Jones said. “If circumstances were to change and membership expansion provided a clear benefit to both HRRA and prospective member communities, it is certainly something that could be considered.”

Connecticut does have a trash problem, however, and efforts by municipalities and DEEP to inspire waste reduction have often done more to irritate the public than make any dent in solid waste. Efforts to implement pay-as-you-throw programsacross different municipalities – again, supported with DEEP grants – were met with public resistance to the point that trash has practically become a third rail in municipal politics.

With MIRA shutting down, Connecticut only has a few operating trash-burning facilities. The rest is being shipped to landfills in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, and some town leaders like Harwinton’s Criss and Winsted’s Arcelaschi question how much longer those states will be willing to accept that.

“Why is Connecticut sending trash to landfills in other states?” Arcelaschi asked. “How much longer are those other states going to accept our trash? That’s question that needs to be answered as some point.”

“What we need in Connecticut is greater competition and better control of escalating waste management costs. The waste industry has become increasingly consolidated over the years, and the interests of municipalities and residents are best served when multiple service providers are competing for business,” Heaton-Jones said. “Our shared goal should be a system that is environmentally responsible, operationally sustainable, and financially fair for the people who ultimately pay the bills: Connecticut’s residents and businesses.”

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