ROCKLAND — September 15, 2026 — The Select Board voted Tuesday to join a 12-town agreement building a permanent household hazardous waste depot at the Hanover Transfer Station, a regional facility that will be canceled outright if all 12 towns do not sign by mid-October. Rockland would pay about $2,400 a year above its current hazardous waste costs, money the town has already appropriated.
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The depot would replace six of the South Shore Recycling Cooperative’s 12 annual pop-up collection days with seven collections at a fixed, enclosed site. Rockland residents would keep access to all 13 events the cooperative runs across its 18 member towns. The town has belonged to the cooperative for 28 years.
The timetable is the pressure point. Twelve of those 18 towns have put up letters of support and funding, and every one of the 12 has to execute the intermunicipal agreement before construction contracts can be awarded at the cooperative’s October 28 meeting. Bids go out at the end of September, with construction targeted for March and operation by May. The cooperative’s executive director, Claire Galkowski, stated the stakes:
Before we can award any contracts to any construction companies, we need to have all the inter-municipal agreements signed, otherwise we’re going to cancel the project.
Kingston has already signed.
Construction money would come primarily from state grants. The recurring difference is the roughly $2,400 a year per town, which covers insurance, maintenance and a reserve fund that the pop-up model does not carry. The cooperative’s disposal contract with Clean Harbors, which runs through fiscal 2028, is priced at about $55 a car against roughly $86 a car under the current state contract. If comparable bids do not materialize when that contract expires, costs would run 45% to 60% higher. Billing by the drum instead of by the car would cut at least 15% starting in fiscal 2029.
Every signing town appoints a member to a Hazardous Waste Depot Council that will decide how costs are split and whether residents pay at the gate. A copayment matching Braintree’s, $10 for up to 10 gallons and $20 for up to 25 gallons, would offset the entire increase.
No member spoke against the agreement. Member Steven O’Donnell framed it as a contamination question:
How can we not do this? Creating the opportunity for people to be able to dispose of these things safely I think will encourage compliance.
O’Donnell also linked the vote to PFAS in the ground at the air base and argued that people put hazardous material in the trash when the legal options are inconvenient or expensive. The chair said the town’s share is already appropriated in Department 443, its waste and disposal collection account, and asked that the depot’s list of accepted materials be posted on the town website.
