1. General System. The systematic collection of garbage was first instituted in New Haven in 1876, through the efforts of that picturesque pioneer in sanitation, Professor W. H. Brewer. It was first placed under the Board of Health, but with a growing realization of the fact that the handling of municipal wastes is rather an engineering than a health problem, it was in 1915, at the request of the Board of Health, removed from the jurisdiction of that Boarr1 and placed under the Department of Public Works.

At present the Department of Public Works supervises and pays for the collection of garbage in all parts of the city except Ward 32, which employs its own contractor. The Department makes its own collections in the northwestern third of the city and pays contractors to make them in all other areas as indicated in the table below.

GARBAGE COLLECTION. 1926.

* Net cost, see p. 65.

The amount of garbage collected from District A in 1926 was 4,354 tons and the total amount collected from all areas is estimated ar 14,665 tons, or 37 tons per day.

All of the garbage collected is disposed of by feeding to hogs under conditions which will be discussed below.

In addition to these major collections, the Health Department licenses 29 collectors of offal from hotels, meat markets and the like which is disposed of in 3 licensed rendering plants. The Street Department disposes of dead animals by delivering the larger ones at the rendering plants and burying the smaller ones (644 carcasses thus disposed of in 1926).

No official provision is made for the collection of ashes and rubbish. Each householder must contract for this service with private collectors who dispose of the materials on tide plats and dumps under the supervision of the Department of Public Works.

2. Adequacy of Garbage Collection. According tot he contract with the garbage collectors, collections from residences must be made twice a week and from restaurants, three times a week. Daily collections have recently been inaugurated for the larger restaurants. Complaints of failure to call for garbage are made to the Board of Health and at once transmitted to the Department of Public Works. If the contractors are at fault, they are given twenty-four hours to collect and then fined $2.00 for each offense if the garbage remains uncollected. Ten years ago, complaints of this nature were very frequent, half a dozen a day; now the system in general works much more smoothly and complaints average less than one a day. The insanitary conditions resulting from carelessness and inattention on the part of collectors, which we found so frequent in 1916, have now been reduced to a minimum.

The agreement between the contractors and the city provides that the garbage "shall be removed in such manner and in such wagons as shall be designated by said Department of Public Works and said receptacles shall be kept water-tight and securely and tightly closed when in transit" and that "said removal shall be made to the satisfaction and approval of said Department of Public Works and in compliance with its rules and regulations." The Department of Public Works distributes circulars to householders giving specific directions as to their part in facilitating the handling of garbage in an inoffensive manner. These circulars emphasize that the garbage can should be of galvanized iron with a deep over-lapping cover and should have a capacity of 10 gallons for every 4 persons (never less than 10 gallons for any household), and that it should be placed in a convenient location. Only drained food waste should be placed in the garbage receptacle, and if cans, paper, ashes or rubbish are mixed with the garbage, the mixture cannot be collected. Neglect on the part of the householder to fulfill these conditions will naturally lead to unsatisfactory results.

3. Disposal of Garbage. The city maintains its own hog farm on the grounds of the Poor Farm at Springside for the area served by its own collectors. The Farnham hog farm occupies an adjacent area and the Daley farm is on a high ridge on the outskirts of Fair Haven. Each of these farms has from 700 to 1,500 hogs, depending on the season. Douglass and Triumpho maintain much smaller farms on East Grand Avenue and near Morris Cove respectively.

Neither of the three large farms is representative of this type of garbage disposal at its best. The hogs are for the most part housed in tumble-down dirty shanties and decomposed garbage in, under and around the feeding platforms is highly offensive. The Daley farm is by far the best of the three, being located on a steep hillside with excellent drainage, and its upkeep is also good. Relatively slight expenditure would make this plant an ideal one. At Springside, two excellent new breeding-houses have recently been completed, but the location of this farm in a muddy hollow, is very poor and the upkeep as well as much of the construction, here and at the Farnham place, leave much to be desired.

It seems probable that the growth of the city will before very many years make the Springside properties too valuable to be used in this manner.

It is impossible to expect contractors who have only an annual contract (as is at present the case) to spend thc money necessary to put their farms into the best sanitary condition. It would be highly desirable to make such contracts on a five-year basis and then to require the reconstruction of the-farms along the admirable lines which have been developed in other cities.

There has been justifiable complaint on the part of the regular contractors of the practice on the part of certain farmers of collecting the best garbage from certain districts for their own use. Such irregular collections work hardship on the contractors by taking the best materials for hog-feeding away from them, and the results are highly unsatisfactory since there is no control over the collections made in this manner. The city is very properly taking steps to eliminate such practices.

4. Cost of Garbage Collection and Disposal. The net cost to the city of garbage collection and disposal is indicated in the table above. The sums set down opposite the names of the contractors represent the sums actually paid to them. The net cost for District A is computed as follows. For the wages of collectors in this district, the city in 1926 paid $22,974.77; for equipment and incidentals, $810.73; for upkeep of horses, wagons and office, $13,500.00; for maintenance of the Springside hog-farm, $3,361.67; and for reconstruction of the plant at the hog farm, $3,757.00. Adding these sums together and subtracting $20,059.85, the revenue obtained from the sales of pork and pork products of the farm, we get $24,344.32.

It will be noted, first of all, that the hog farm at Springside paid a substantial profit over the cost of its operation and reconstruction: $12,941.18 (the difference between $20,059.85 and $7,118.67). In addition to the expenses listed above, the Department of Public Works spent $1,643.25 on inspection of the whole collection system, public and private. We may properly pro-rate the cost of this inspection and after so doing this gives us the following costs per capita and per ton.

The costs per ton for the city district are distinctly higher than those for the districts served by the contractors, largely perhaps on account of a higher wage scale. The costs for the city as a whole are reasonable. In 1924 Dr. L. E. Poole made a careful comparative study of costs of garbage collection and found New Haven midway between Hartford and Bridgeport in this respect.

5. Conditions Resulting from the Absence of a Systematic Collection System for Ashes and Rubbish. The most serious deficiency in the present system of handling refuse in New Haven and, next to that of harbor pollution, the most serious of all New Haven's strictly sanitary problems is the lack of any systematic provision for removing ashes and rubbish. Ten years ago, we pointed out the grossly insanitary conditions which must necessarily result from such an arrangement and the economic waste involved. In the poorer districts it is inevitable, when no systematic collection is available, that ashes and rubbish shall accumulate all winter awaiting a spasmodic cleanup in the spring. Conditions have been vastly improved over those which obtained in 1916 by the activities of Dr. Rice's sanitary inspectors, but they will not be satisfactory until there is provision for a regular collection of ashes and rubbish throughout the year under public auspices.

The ashes and rubbish accumulated by the collectors are disposed of by dumping on two public dumps on the Boulevard and on James Street, respectively. Certain small dumps are also maintained on private property under the supervision of the Health Department. The two public dumps are carefully controlled by the Department of Public Works and are in general kept in satisfactory condition.

Ten years ago there were fifteen public dumps maintained by the city and the reduction in their number, with the careful supervision given to the two still in operation. is a cause for satisfaction.

With the filling up of the Boulevard and James Street dumps, which is proceeding rapidly, it is however probable that the city must seek some other mode of disposing of its rubbish in the future.

6. Present System of Collecting Ashes and Rubbish Costly as Well as Insanitary. The collection of ashes and rubbish by small contractors dealing with individual householders is not only an unsatisfactory procedure but an expensive one.

In order to gain some idea as to the actual financial burden involved, Dr. Rice was good enough to ask his sanitary inspectors to make a canvass of a series of typical households in various sections of the city. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-three households were visited, selected so as to represent various economic groups in the population, and the actual cost of removal of ashes and rubbish ascertained. The results are indicated below.

ANNUAL COST OF ASHES AND RUBBISH COLLECTION 2,173 REPRESENTATIVE FAMILIES.

These figures are estimates. and in all probability considerably below the true figure. As they stand, they give a total cost of $10,303 for the 2,221 families or $4.64 per family. If we assume five persons to a family, this gives a cost of $0.93 per capita.

The cost of collecting these materials on a municipal basis or through arrangement with a large contractor may be deduced from the following considerations. The total tonnage of ashes and rubbish in an American city will average about four times the tonnage of garbage, but the net cost of removal per ton is much less on account of less frequent removal. A study made by Dr. L. E. Poole in the Department of Public Health of the Medical School two years ago showed that four large New England cities in 1924 paid for collection and disposal of garbage alone $3.04 per ton or $.24 per capita, while four other cities having combined collection of all wastes paid about the same amount per ton ($3.32) and $1.04 per capita. This would make the cost for collection of ashes and rubbish about $.80 per capita, or three times the cost of collecting garbage alone. About the same ratio (3:1) for the cost of collecting ashes and rubbish, as compared with the cost of collecting garbage, is indicated by the figures cited in Hering and Greeley's standard text on this subject. If we take the present New Haven per capita cost of garbage collection (38 cents) as a basis, the collection of ashes and rubbish would come to about $1.20 per capita. The present unsatisfactory system costs, according to our estimate, nearly as much as a really adequate one. If, however, a public collection system were inaugurated, we would urge that provision be made, as at present, for collections from the cellars, since a system which requires ash and rubbish cans to be placed on the sidewalks works hardship on the householder and produces unsightly conditions in the streets.

7. Summary and Recommendations. The general system of garbage collection now in force in New Haven seems on the whole satisfactory and reasonably economical. The system of disposal by hog-feeding is a cheap one but it could, and should, be conducted in a more cleanly and sanitary manner than is at present the case.

In order to improve conditions at the hog-farms of contractors, it would be highly desirable to make five-year contracts so that the contractors may be enabled to provide for the necessary capital investments.

The system of collecting ashes and rubbish by private arrangement between the householders and a multitude of unlicensed and often irresponsible collectors is a highly unsatisfactory one, and makes many sections of the city unsightly and offensive during the winter and spring seasons. Systematic collection under contract with the city would bring New Haven in line with other progressive cities and would cost the citizens as taxpayers something like $220,000 a year as compared with about $160,000 a year which they are now paying out in their individual capacities with quite inadequate results. The city Fire Marshal has recently pointed out the importance of such a step from the standpoint of fire protection. If this can not be done, the collectors of ashes and rubbish should at least be licensed and supervised as to regularity of service, methods of handling and charges, by the Police Department or the Department of Public Works.

The growth of the city and the filling up of the present public dumps is likely to create serious problems in the near future problems which it is none too soon for the city to study seriously.