Town Nearing Deal for Sale of Former Landfill Property

After standing dormant for years, the capped landfill on DePaolo Drive could soon see new activity – one that would be much cleaner that using the land as a town dump.

Southington is nearing a deal that would sell the property to Supreme Forest Products, a Harwinton-based company that specializes in land clearing, chipping and grinding of non-hazardous materials, and the resale of products.

To sweeten the deal, the new site would likely serve as a storage place for the wholesale of ground asphalt that would help provide a storage space for materials that would be ground off-site by contractors working on the milling and repaving of Southington’s roads before being brought to the property.

“We are still in final phase of (the sale process),” Southington Town Attorney Mark Sciota said this week. “There are a few points left to mull over.”

Details of the sale were not immediately available and were not released due to the negotiations.

Officials representing Supreme Forest Products, a subsidiary of B&R Corp., came before the Planning and Zoning Commission this week to present a revised proposal for use and early preparations of the former landfill property and two adjacent properties to increase storage capacity and begin work to install a retention basin in preparation of future development.

Under the plan presented, the company would increase capacity on the three sites for storage of materials to grade the site, as well as for storage of materials including mulch and ground asphalt from nearby projects that would be used for resale.

George Andrews, an engineer with Loureiro Engineering Associates, said the work and storage would be done in phases to minimize impact including site views, with the highest piles reaching 35 feet at their maximum. The project would involve a maximum of 24 truckloads per hour, 12 entering and 12 leaving, with a likelihood of eight trucks per hour most of the time.

“There will be use of a filter saw and mesh tubes filled with mulch or woodchips,” Andrews said. “The entire stockpile will be surrounded to mitigate erosion of any materials to adjacent surfaces.”

“Construction activities are not all happen at same time. They will be extended out over extended period,” said Attorney William Tracey, representing the company.

Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission tabled a vote on Tuesday and will vote on the matter following a site plan presentation in May.

The latest changes may be part of a larger plan that could bring a fully functional organic pyrolysis plant. The plant would operate alongside the mulch manufacturing facility currently before the zoning commission.

Mark Vigneault, a Southington resident and vice-president of Supreme Industries, said last year that the plant would be just the second in the state and use exciting new technology that could very well be the wave of the future.

“As a Southington resident, I would love my town to be ahead of curve both in the state and the nation in terms of green wood waste and source separated organics,” Vigneault said. “The plant would be only the second in the state.”

For more on the plans for a potential plant operations, click the link provided.

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