Two months after state officials announced plans to shutter a local transfer station in Torrington, Senate lawmakers on Tuesday voted to advance legislation aimed at keeping the facility operating and under public control.

But with millions of dollars in state support due to run out July 1, some critics continued to question whether local officials have the necessary resources to take over the facility.

The legislation, Senate Bill 521, would hand control of the facility from the state over to the Northwest Resource Recovery Authority, an arm of the local council of governments. The NRRA would pay only nominal transaction costs to purchase the 4-acre facility.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 34-2 on Tuesday, with two Republicans in opposition to the measure. The bill now heads to the House.

“The towns in the northwest corner have a history of partnering together and regionalizing services,” said state Sen. Paul Honig, D-Harwinton. “This is just another example of that. The idea is to band together and have a kind of publicly-run facility that can foster competition — [a] competitive bidding process — to see which operators are going to operate the facility. Really, we don’t want to be in a situation where there’s only one giant company that does all the trash management up in that facility.”

The large company Honig referred to is USA Waste & Recycling, which sought to purchase the facility from the state for $3.25 million.

The company’s bid fell apart last year, however, after a last-minute item was inserted into the state budget transferring the station’s operating permit to the Department of Administrative Services — thus keeping it out of private hands. The facility had previously operated for years as part of the Materials Innovation Recycling Authority, which handled waste collection for dozens of towns across Connecticut.

The money from the sale was supposed to go towards the cleanup of MIRA’s former trash incinerator in Hartford’s South Meadows neighborhood, which closed in 2022.

Frank Antonacci, the chief executive of USA Waste, has also sought to build support for his company’s bid — namely, by offering towns in the region 10-year contracts that he estimated would save them $8 to $10 per ton of trash dropped off at the facility, compared to the current prices offered by the state.

Antonacci said the savings could be even higher because the station’s tip fees have been subsidized with roughly $3 million in state funding that is due to run out in July.

“We are disappointed that this train continues to hurtle down the tracks on its way to increasing costs for taxpayers, the impacted towns, and the State of Connecticut,” Antonacci said in a statement Tuesday. “We’ll continue to make our case to local elected officials and state representatives. We’re still hopeful logic will prevail.”

Torrington Mayor Molly Spino echoed those concerns Tuesday, saying she’s reached out to local legislators asking them to oppose the bill. In addition to the impact on tip fees, Spino said Torrington could gain an additional $100,000 a year in tax revenues if the facility were to be sold to a private company. (Publicly-owned facilities are generally exempt from property taxes in Connecticut.)

“They’ve never operated a facility like this before, that’s the main concern,” Spino said. “When there’s professionals on the outside saying there’s no way they’re going to be able to do this, you have to listen to the professionals.”

The NRRA was created last year for the purposes of operating one or more transfer stations in the region, and currently shares its staff and resources with the Northwest Hills Council of Governments. Representatives of both the COG and the NRRA could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Sen. Honig said the NRRA plans to open a public bidding process to find a private operator for the transfer station, and that USA Waste is welcome to bid on that contract.

In the long run, he added, the towns in the region aim to emulate the model used by the Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, which serves 14 towns in western Connecticut.

“They have a very well-run public facility where they get good, good pricing for the residents of Danbury and these tip fees,” Honig said.

But Paul Harrington, the town manager in Winchester, said not all of the towns within the COG are in agreement over the proposal. Harrington said his town signed an agreement with USA Waste last year that he estimated has saved residents about $60,000 on waste collection services.

“Every town is having budget struggles this year — that’s a teacher, that’s a police officer,” Harrington said.

He added, “It never penciled out at MIRA, I don’t know how they think it’s going to work without subsidies.”