We are so used to wincing every time the Legislature convenes for a vote, that a June 8 bipartisan and unanimous vote in both chambers came as a rare relief and a pleasant surprise. State representatives and senators overturned Governor M. Jodi Rell’s veto of legislation on solid waste handling designed to bring added protections to the state’s aquifers from contamination by solid waste transfer stations. One result of the veto override is that the Housatonic Railroad Company’s efforts to expand and intensify its solid waste transfer terminal in Hawleyville must now meet stricter environmental standards safeguarding water quality.

While this is great news for the people of Hawleyville, who have 800 acres of aquifer at risk from development including the railroad transfer station, this legislation will also require higher water quality standards for 18 other nonmunicipal waste transfer stations around the state — a consequence cited by the governor, incredibly, as one reason for her veto. In the end, the far-reaching impact of this bill was the most compelling reason for the override.

The new law will require that the state come up with statutory definitions of the “primary aquifers” and “secondary aquifers” referenced in the legislation, which may delay some solid waste applications, including the Housatonic Railroads application currently under review by the Department of Environmental Protection. But this kind of technical calibration of our state’s environmental laws makes sense with or without this legislation.

The new law also introduces the criterion of need to the state’s environmental review of those solid waste transfer stations that pose a threat to drinking water supplies. In addition to demonstrating that such a facility is environmentally viable, applicants must demonstrate that the need for it is not already being met by another facility. It prohibits the commissioner of environmental protection from approving any permit application for construction or expansion of solid waste transfer stations within 1,000 feet of a primary or secondary aquifer “until there exists a need for such additional capacity” as specified in the state’s Solid Waste Management Plan.

This stipulation of need may be the ultimate undoing of the ill-advised expansion of the Housatonic Railroad Company’s waste handling activities in Hawleyville. Just five miles and ten minutes from the existing waste transfer station on White Street in Danbury, the facility in Hawleyville hardly fills a need. Conversely, the railroad’s proposed private facility threatens to undermine efforts by the City of Danbury, the Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, and the US Department of Justice to secure public ownership of the White Street facility as the basis of a regional solid waste plan. From the perspective of serving the overall public interest, not only is there no demonstrable need for the Hawleyville facility, it is desperately not needed.

Legislative common sense. Bipartisanship. Decisive action. Something tells us we’re not in Kansas anymore. We thank our state legislators for following the yellow brick road at least as far as this most satisfactory conclusion.