Dear Editor:

The recent letters regarding the “pick pile” at our transfer station have done an excellent job of showing what is really at stake here—not nostalgia, but a functioning system of community reuse that delivered clear, everyday value.

Brian McDonald highlighted the occasional extraordinary find—the kind of story that sticks in memory. Liza Maugham described something more fundamental: the steady, practical benefit of ordinary residents finding exactly what they need, often at little or no cost. A door that fits. A tool put back into service. A lamp restored. Items that would otherwise have become waste instead re-entered use.

That combination—rare surprises and routine usefulness—is what gave the reuse area its real strength.

Taken together, these accounts describe a system that quietly accomplished several goals at once: reducing waste, extending product life, and lowering costs for residents. In a time when most materials are headed in the opposite direction, that is no small thing.

Which makes its closure difficult to reconcile with the rest of the facility.

Residents are already expected to sort materials, carry loads, and move through areas where compactors, scrap wood, and metal piles are part of normal operations. The transfer station is not a risk-free environment. Yet a designated reuse area—where items are simply set aside for others—has been treated as though it presents a fundamentally different level of risk.

OSHA, as generally understood, governs worker safety, not the ordinary activity of residents at a transfer station. That distinction makes that rationale offered for the closure feel less like a matter of safety and more like the question of insurance liability management. And if that is the real issue, then it should be stated plainly and weighed against the demonstrated benefit that is now being lost.

As Liza noted, what made the reuse pile special was not just what was found, but that it was accessible, practical, and part of the rhythm of community life. 

A low-cost system that worked well for years, and was valued by the community, should not disappear without a serious effort to find a workable alternative.

It is difficult to rebuild something once it has been closed without a real attempt to fix what was never truly broken.

Andrew Cozzi

Boothbay