Eighty-nine volunteers turned out for Farmington's town-wide cleanup on Saturday, April 25, weighing in 1,339 pounds of trash on the day and filling collection trucks that tipped at about 2,200 pounds. The gap between the two figures is the cumulative effect of a 25-pound cap on single-piece weighing — one toilet, one chair, one half-rotted picnic bench all count as 25 pounds even when they don't — plus the items that get added to the trucks after volunteers leave the station.

That tally also does not include bottles and cans. Volunteers staged those separately on cleanup day, and the Lions Club has since collected them. Garrett Daigle, the Assistant Town Planner who staffs the Green Efforts Committee, told committee members at their May 5 meeting that the bottle-and-can haul probably weighed under 100 pounds — mostly plastic and aluminum, with some glass.

EB Specialty, a private company that has participated in the cleanup for two or three years, ran its collection mid-week using its own dumpster, which is why its contribution does not show up in the volunteer-day tally either.

Top Groups: Miss Porter's, Bubby Tube, NHS, Land Trust

Daigle named the top four groups by weight: Miss Porter's, a self-named seven-person group calling itself "Bubby Tube," the broader National Honor Society contingent, and the Farmington Land Trust. Bubby Tube, Jennifer Wynn told the committee, was actually a subset of the same NHS group — they just banded together separately. The top individual was Heshio Patel.

The committee also intends to give a prize to a four-person family — the same family, Mary said, that came out from under one of Farmington's bridges this year, as they did last year.

A 4.75-Pound Showing

Among the political party committees, the gap was wide. The Republican Town Committee logged 4.75 pounds — with one participant. The Democratic Town Committee logged 670.53 pounds.

Hazardous Waste

The companion household hazardous waste collection drew 835 cars. Daigle said e-waste was again heavy, comparable to the prior year, when haulers had to send out a second truck.

The IAR Problem

Stacey Petruzella, the Resident Member who covered the Irving-Alling Recreation station, told the committee that at least 100 additional pounds of trash were collected at IAR but never weighed. A group of high school students arrived at the very end of the cleanup window; Petruzella told them to leave the bags rather than carry them away, then put them — along with one of her own — into IAR's private dumpster after the truck had already left. ("If I'm on a video and I get a ticket for it, Garrett, please help me fight that ticket.")

The bigger problem at IAR was civic, not logistical. A baseball game ran at the recreation complex during the cleanup hours, and not one of the parents at the game stopped to ask about the cleanup. "Not one of those parents talked to me," Petruzella said. "It's like nothing."

IAR has been a cleanup station for about eight years. Petruzella said the committee had originally moved to IAR from Farmington High School because traffic at the high school was too heavy and people would not sit through it to drop off a bag. The committee wanted a station on the eastern side of town.

Daigle floated an alternative for next year: Metro Realty, which owns the medical-office property across from the East Farms firehouse, could be approached about parking access. Medical offices are generally empty on weekends, the lot would handle the volume, and the East Farms firehouse itself is too tight to host a station — its lot doubles as the firehouse's garage access, the same constraint that has dropped the Oakland firehouse, almost at the West Hartford town line, from the cleanup rotation. (The Tungsis Hose firehouse has side parking that keeps the trucks clear, which is why it still works.)

Petruzella's other suggestion was simpler: drop IAR and run three sites instead of four.

Prizes and Next Steps

Several Naples Pizza gift cards, a Wooden Tap card (the only one in the pool that expires), and a Fork and Fire restaurant card are in hand. Farmington Mini Golf will donate based on participant count once Daigle confirms the total. Daigle said he will reach out to the National Honor Society advisor to coordinate prize allocation across the multiple NHS-affiliated participants and to identify whether the four-person family is among them. The full participant list will be circulated to committee members.

The Green Efforts Committee meets next in June. The same May 5 meeting that produced this cleanup recap also voted unanimously to fund Union Elementary's $4,500 compost-sorting table.