There's nothing definite to say about it yet, but members of the Carver, Marion, Wareham Regional Refuse District Committee are considering consolidating transfer stations and waste dumps in the three towns into one location.

Why? According to Carver Town Administrator Michael Malinoski, the advantages of using just one facility would be decreased liability, increased safety for residents using the facility, and a healthy reduction in costs.

Residents pay a yearly fee for access to the transfer stations, including Marion's Benson Brook station in Marion, the Carver-Marion-Wareham (CMW) transfer station in Rochester, and Carver's CMW Landfill. Private trash collectors also leave waste at the stations.

The committee agreed to give the three town administrators—Malinoski, Wareham's Derek Sullivan, and Marion's Paul Dawson—permission to sit down and work on a possible consolidation plan.

Wareham's Director of Municipal Maintenance, Dave Menard, said he had recently toured the three transfer facilities with Sullivan, and had found problems at each of them. "There's commercial dumping, there are steps that are unsafe, most of the facilities are understaffed," he said. "They're all poorly managed."

There are still a lot of questions in the air about a possible consolidation. The town administrators will simply be studying the good and bad points of possible consolidation plans when they sit down. However, Malinoski said that consolidation could be a real possibility.

"We're not financially solvent," he said. "This might be the way it has to be."

The district has been facing financial woes since 2017, when trash bills unexpectedly skyrocketed for all three towns; Marion received it's first bill in years, while Wareham's waste assessment jumped nearly $90,000.

It was later discovered that the district has not been properly audited since 2012, and as a result, committee members aren't sure how much money is coming into or out of the district—or much money it currently holds.