Islip appoints Eric Hofmeister as Resource Recovery Agency head

The Town of Islip this week appointed Eric Hofmeister president of its Resource Recovery Agency, which manages the town’s solid waste system.

Hofmeister — who has worked for almost 24 years in a range of roles for the town, including a stint as the appointed town supervisor in 2006 — was reassigned this month from deputy commissioner at Long Island MacArthur Airport to commissioner of the town’s Department of Environmental Control.

The DEC commissioner held the unpaid position of head of the Resource Recovery Agency from 1997 to 2006. As DEC commissioner, Hofmeister is charged with running Islip’s animal shelter, shellfish hatchery, compost and recycling facilities, and the Hauppauge Landfill. He also has oversight of curbside collections for the town’s 80,000 residential dwellings.

The Islip Resource Recovery Agency was established under state legislation in 1982 as the financing vehicle for the town’s waste energy facility. Its role has since expanded to that of managing Islip’s integrated solid waste system on behalf of the town: the waste-to-energy facility on Veterans Memorial Highway adjacent to Long Island MacArthur Airport, a multipurpose recycling center on Lincoln Avenue in Holbrook, a construction and demolition debris landfill in Hauppauge, and a composting facility on the airport’s northern border.