A Call To Reopen 'Home Exchange' in East Hampton

Two separate petitions being circulated online and outside dumpsters full of cardboard, beverage containers and trash bags, are calling on East Hampton Town to reopen the “Home Exchange” area at the Springs-Fireplace Road transfer station, where people long were able to deposit items that they no longer wanted but that had years of useful or meaningful life left in them.

“I found so many treasures for my home there,” said Carin Constant, who started one of the two petitions. “There’s a lot of treasures and also some things you really need. In scary economic times, it’s amazing to find something like a new toaster for free.”

The Home Exchange area — a concrete patio and driveway covered with a angled aluminum roof between the entrance and exit roads to the town’s busiest garbage dump — has been closed off since the pandemic, the driveway blocked by concrete dividers.

The closure was prompted by concerns about spread of the coronavirus. But reopening it may face challenges that vaccinations and decreasing viral spread cannot solve.

“I do think it’s a good way for people to not throw things away — recycle and reuse — but it takes a lot of folks to run it, and I think that’s been an issue with staffing these days,” East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said. “It had gotten so you sort of needed someone there to supervise, and then it has to be cleaned up at the end of the day, so that takes time and a crew.”

Overby recounted that Home Exchange, while very popular with residents, had faced some issues with its operation. A billboard still stands by the now empty area listing a long litany of rules of conduct at the Home Exchange — admonishments like limits on the amount of time someone should spend perusing the items left, that commercial enterprise was prohibited and that those using the facility must be polite.

The rules were often violated with those eager for deals often settling in for hours, piling dozens of items scooped up as soon as they were deposited, in vehicles, and several people rushing to a new arrival — despite the boldfaced scolding on the nearby sign discouraging “aggressive behavior.” There was some evidence that some of the collectors were then putting the items they had garnered out for purchase at yard sales or on Facebook Marketplace.

“I used to go there and it got a little crazy,” said Kathy Weiss, a former employee of the town Sanitation Department who was at the transfer station on Tuesday morning. “People would drive up with their stuff, and people would converge on them, grabbing stuff out of their car, stuff that they weren’t even giving away.”

Weiss, it must be pointed out, said this with a small, neatly-folded Afghan rug tucked under her arm, which she had just picked up off a table at one end of the transfer station building that has become the defacto new Home Exchange area, in much smaller scale.

“It’s a good idea — obviously, I think it’s a good idea,” she said, patting her new rug with a smile. “But somebody has to monitor it.”

Sanitation staff charged with keeping the transfer station building tidy have only fleeting tolerance for items left along the wall by those who need to unload their haul but are pained to see a perfectly good [dehumidifier/stereo/lamp] go into the trash heap. A few items in especially good condition find their way to the corner of the building where Weiss found her new rug, the rest may get a few minutes last chance to get scooped up by someone in need, but otherwise are into the dumpsters as soon as their former owner has turned their back.

“He keeps this place very clean,” Weiss said nodding to a young man in a yellow town employee shirt and heavy gloves who, indeed, had the concrete floors of the transfer station nearly spotless.

The Home Exchange area was purpose-built when the town capped the landfill and opened the new recycling and transfer station in the 1990s. It was a formalized version of a practice that had grown organically from the days when garbage toting Bonackers would drive their vehicle up the to the top of the landfill itself and simply toss their trash over the side. A small group started to lurk by the dumping spot and rush in to save items about be cast into oblivion.

When the new dedicated area opened up, it quickly earned the nickname “Caldor’s East” — an only vaguely lighthearted dig at the former department store chain.

“I think it’s a real shame — you know the saying, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and we throw away much too much in this country as it is,” said Joe Trujillo as he emptied a bin of plastic bottles into the designated dumpster. “When I was younger, you wouldn’t throw anything away until it was in complete shambles and you just couldn’t fix it anymore. Now, as soon as something has a tiny crack in it or doesn’t match the color of the walls anymore — well, it must go! At least there, some folks got a chance to grab things they would still use even if someone else wouldn’t.”

Between the two petitions — the one being circulated by Constant on Change.org, and one that people have been soliciting signatures for at the recycling center and town Senior Center on occasional days in recent weeks — more than 500 residents have put their name beside the plea to reopen the facility.

Steven Lynch, the town’s superintendent of highways, who oversees the Sanitation Department as well, did not return phone calls seeking comment about whether reopening the Home Exchange area is likely, or even possible.

“I know that the Highway Department has been down a few people, and it’s possible that the Sanitation Department is as well. I know they have some long-term people that are leaving soon,” Overby said. “I know people liked it, but I think it’s a matter of whether we have the ability to manage it properly. I would hope we can get to that point again.”