Environmental Affairs - Special Committee — April 21, 2026

Buttons.

So we're all thinking of coming in about 5 or 10 minutes.

Yes.

Is he here yet?

Okay.

All right, uh, councilors, we're going to get started in about 20 seconds, 30 seconds here.

We're good.

Give me a go/no-go.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

It is 7:00 PM on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026.

I'd like to call to order this special committee meeting on environmental affairs here in the New Bedford City Council chamber, room 214.

Note, this meeting is being live streamed and recorded.

City Council and committee meetings can be viewed on the City of New Bedford's homepage under Quick Links, then Meetings.

I am joined in the City Council chambers tonight by my colleagues in government who are members of this committee.

We have Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette, At-Large Councilor Brian Gomes, At-Large Councilor James Roy, and Ward 5 Councilor Joe Lopes.

Joe Lopes is not a member of this committee, but I want to thank him for being here nonetheless.

I'll ask the clerk, are there any letters to to read into the record?

I have one letter to read into the record.

This is from Councilor Pereira.

I am writing to inform you that I am unable to attend tonight's committee meeting due to a personal commitment.

Please read this letter into the record to make my colleagues and the public aware of the reason for my absence.

Need a motion to receive and place this on file.

Made by Councilor Roy, seconded by Councilor Choquette.

Anyone on the question?

All those in favor say aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

I'll ask the clerk to read item 1 that's before us.

Item number 1 is a written motion, Councilor Choquette, requesting that Wendy Morrill and Tracy Wallace of South Coast Neighbors United appear before the Special Committee on Environmental Affairs to present community-based waste solutions for Greater New Bedford.

It was referred here on March 26, 2024.

On February 19th, it was heard and tabled.

Uh, February 19th, 2026, the next time this matter is placed on the agenda, invite Anthony Novelli, Executive Director of GMB Regional Refuse Management District, and Matthew Thomas, a legal counsel for GMB Regional Refuse Management.

The item was tabled.

Item 1 is before you and on the table.

I need a motion to remove this item from the table.

Point of order.

Yes, Councillor Roy.

Are the invitees here?

Mr. Thomas is here and Mr. Novelli.

Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't see— yes, they're both here.

Great.

Yes, sir.

Motion to remove from the table.

Seconded by Councillor Roy.

Seconded by Councillor Choquette.

All those in favor say aye.

I oppose.

The ayes have it, so this item is now properly before us.

Councilor Choquette, you filed this motion, so whom would you like to call up first to speak with?

Uh, I would say let's speak to Mr. Novelli.

Mr. Novelli, would you mind taking the podium, please?

Would you please just state for the record your name and address, please?

Good evening, my name is Anthony Novelli of My personal address?

No, no, no, not personal.

Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District, 300 Samuel Barnett Boulevard in New Bedford.

Thank you.

All right, Councilor Choquette, the floor is yours.

Well, I guess in regards to what's going on with the, with the, you know, refuse management district, could you give us a broad overview of, you know, of what's going on?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for inviting me here and for including us in this conversation.

You know, we saw the topic of reducing waste, uh, certainly right up our alley.

Uh, the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District was created through a partnership by the City of New Bedford and the Town of Dartmouth to, to manage waste.

We own and operate the Crapo Hill Landfill, and we do have full-time staff dedicated to waste reduction and recycling efforts in both communities.

So we do have an ongoing effort to try and reduce waste in New Bedford and Dartmouth and put quite a bit of time and resources into trying to find solutions for reducing the amount of waste, for increasing the recycling, and for having a more sustainable waste solution for New Bedford and Dartmouth.

So it was definitely of interest when we saw this on the agenda, and, um, you know, I wanted to thank you for allowing us to be part of the discussion.

Do you have specific questions, or is that— Yeah, thank you.

Um, so what is the status, and, and again, for probably the folks that are watching.

How many cells do you guys have over at the Crapo Hill Landfill as far as, you know, contained separate containment areas?

Yeah, the cells are divided in 2 phases.

We're currently operating in Phase 2, which is a combination of 6 different cells that have kind of joined together and are forming a full working area.

We are planning and permitting an additional cell right now.

But currently we're operating in 6 different landfill cells in addition to the Phase 1 area that's fully capped, which was from when the landfill first opened.

Okay.

And what do you see as, you know, the point in time or how much longer are these cells viable to receive, you know, the refuse?

Yeah, very valid question.

I want to start with that by saying, you know, we're working to extend the lifespan as long as we can for the benefit of New Bedford and Dartmouth.

And we're really prioritizing this capacity for our member communities.

So these estimates have changed over time.

The amount of capacity hasn't changed, but how quickly we're filling them has.

So we've really tried to cut back, you know, the rate at which we're accepting waste and reduce waste and do efforts like that to prolong the life of the landfill.

Current estimates based on the current waste acceptance rates are approximately 5 years in the existing cells and And then the additional cell would add about another 7 years approximately.

And again, we're working to extend that capacity as much as we can.

Okay.

And we're serving— in this particular refuse district services New Bedford, Dartmouth, and is it part of Freetown also, or— So the district's member communities are the City of New Bedford and the Town of Dartmouth, who are the primary beneficiaries of the landfill.

We do have agreements with other municipalities and haulers to use the landfill, and that revenue helps subsidize the cost of waste disposal for Dartmouth and New Bedford.

So the town of Freetown does use the landfill as well.

We take some waste from the town of Lakeville, and then we have some other commercial contracts.

Okay, um, I'll give my— I yield for now, Mr.

Chair, and give my colleagues some opportunities to ask questions.

Thank you, Councilor Choquette.

The chair recognizes Councilor Roy on his first.

Hi, how are you?

Great.

Um, I, you know, I'm just curious, what are, um, the steps being taken to, um, increase the life of the existing cells at the— oh, the existing cells?

Yeah, we've, uh, so as I said, we mentioned we do take— we have contracts with other haulers and municipalities, and we've really cut back on that acceptance rate from others.

That means a decline in revenue for our district but means, uh, longer capacity in the long run for the members.

So Really trying to be thinking in the long term of this.

We have dedicated outreach for increasing recycling.

We work closely with the city and the town on their, you know, their social media, their outreach events.

You know, the New Bedford recycling page is run by our staff, Marissa Perez-Dormitzer and Meg Hebert.

They do a great job in working with the DFFM on all of the trash and recycling programs.

Certainly there's a large push and effort to try and reduce organics in the waste stream.

We sell backyard compost bins.

We've subsidized other machines called the Food Cycler to try and promote residents to compost and divert food waste out of their homes.

Thank you.

And, you know, we know that organics represent a significant portion of the waste stream that could be diverted to a better use such as composting or anaerobic digestion.

So there's been a lot of focus on ways to try and scale up the current food waste diversion efforts.

Um, you know, it's not easy to launch this into a full citywide, you know, curbside collection program.

There's a lot of logistics and costs involved there, but, um, uh, we are trying to offer a variety of readily available resident options for the residents to be able to divert food waste from the landfill here and now.

In addition, for the long term, we are looking at potential waste-by-rail diversion options.

Really, there's not a lot of capacity at landfills or other facilities in state, and honestly, most of the solid wastes in Massachusetts— actually, about half of the waste generated in the state is leaving the state to go to disposal facilities in other states.

So in a proactive measure for when the landfill eventually does close, we're looking at options for being able to handle that ourselves and then manage manage the transfer of the waste, most likely by rail, to go long distances.

This is going very far distances.

Did you say half the waste in the state is transferred out of state by rail?

This is— yeah, MassDEP published data that approximately 50% of solid waste produced in the state of Massachusetts is being disposed of in another state.

Not from New Bedford, though.

Oh, not specifically New Bedford, no.

So, you know, New Bedford's, you know, curbside collected solid waste all comes right directly to the Crapo Hill landfill.

So, all right, thanks.

I yield to Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councillor.

Um, I'd like to recognize that, uh, Ward 3 Councillor Sean Oliver, who's not a member of the committee, but he has joined us.

So thank you for joining us, Councillor.

Um, thank you.

Do either Councillor Lopes or Councillor Oliver, who are not members of the committee, do either one of you have questions by any chance?

I'd like to recognize you if you do.

No.

Councillor Gomes, I know you're a member of the committee.

Do you have any questions at this time for our guest?

Okay, if the body will allow, I have a question, if that's okay.

Thank you.

So I know you talked— we're talking a little bit about recycling and what's going on here in the city and what we're doing here in the city of New Bedford.

You look at our current recycling rate, I mean, in your opinion— or not in your opinion, but based on what you're seeing via the data and what you're being told and what you see— how do we compare to state and national benchmarks here in New Bedford as far as our rate of recycling?

Are we, are we pulling our weight?

Are we doing what we have to do?

Can we do better?

I mean, anything in life you can always improve on, but I'm just curious.

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's always room to do better, but I wouldn't say we're far behind.

The programs that are in existence, the mandatory curbside recycling, goes a long way.

I don't have specific data on me on the percentage of participants or, you know, contamination in the recycling per se, but Um, you know, we have, as you're well aware— that was my follow-up.

Yes.

Yeah, we have a multilingual community.

We're trying to make efforts to, to reach people through different avenues, right?

We have some social media accounts.

We try to do some traditional outreach, but finding new ways to get the word out there and educate about what can and can't go in their cycling is, is an ongoing challenge, right?

There's, there's 100 different types of plastic.

There's a lot of— did you look at my notes?

That was my next question about how you're doing outreach.

One after another, man.

Sheesh.

But that's good though.

So I, I do see that you're very engaged on social media, so that's good.

You know, if there's anything that we can always do to help with that message as well as a body, let us know.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you know, helping spread the message, making all the citizens aware of our accounts and that we're trying to get this message out there.

We're happy to translate things and find ways to get it out in different languages.

Well, by all means, if you want to put it out there now how people can find you online and whatnot, if you want to give that information, go for it.

Sure.

Yeah, we run the New Bedford Recycling.

You can look up— it should be on the city's website, links to there on the trash and recycling page, newbedfordrecycling.org, New Bedford Recycling Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all tailored towards our programs here in New Bedford.

All right, thanks a bunch, Anthony.

I'd like to recognize that Scott Pemberton, Ward 2 Councilor, was not a member of the committee, but he has joined us.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Do you have any questions for our guest by any chance while you're here?

No?

Okay.

All right, so does anyone else have questions for Anthony or Mr. and Attorney Thomas while they are here.

Anyone else?

All right, Anthony, you're all set then, I guess.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir.

All right, colleagues, uh, we do have another invited guest, but if there's no other requests of our invited guests for information or questions, what's your pleasure on this item?

What would you like to do with it?

Keep it on the table, refer it out for no further action?

Those are the 2 recommended courses of action I'd recommend.

Well, um, point of order.

Sure.

The 2 folks who have been called in initially, Miss Morrill and Miss Wallace, still haven't had a chance to come in, so maybe we should keep this on the table.

We can, Councilor.

I mean, we, we have invited them, so I'm not sure, but if you, um, if you want to reach out to them or the office reach out to them after this meeting to let them know that, um, I believe our next We have not scheduled it yet, so it'll be sometime right before budget, like right before, maybe like in May or something.

Well, we'll look at that calendar.

I'll get with the office, but as soon as we pick a date, if you wouldn't mind, or through the office, reaching out to those 2, um, ladies, that'd be great.

Okay, so, uh, motion to return to table.

So motion to leave it on the table made by Councilor Choquette.

Second.

Second by Councilor Roy.

Can't speak on the question of tabling.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

Seeing there's no other business before us, motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn is made by Councilor Roy, seconded by Councilor Choquette.

Anyone on the question of adjournment?

All those in favor say aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

We are adjourned at 7:13 PM.

Have a great evening, everyone.