By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The Town of Davis Council discussed options for recycling in the area, as well as concerns over the local landfill at the June 10th regular session at Town Hall. The discussion, led by Council Member Catherine Fleischman, emerged from Fleischman’s update to the Council on her efforts to discover more about recycling option around the Davis area.
Fleischman said she had approached the Davis Shop n’ Save, but was informed that the store does not participate in the program. Following this, she approached Sunrise Sanitation, who informed her of their intentions to open a recycling center in Belington within the year. The company has plans to expand recycling into plastics in the future. Fleischman also said the company had plans to meet with the Tucker County Solid Waste Commission about possibly placing a drop off at the Landfill in the future. The next step for the Council Member, she said, would be to contact Commissioner Fred Davis, who is the Tucker County Commission’s representative on the TCSWA Board.
“Right now, the only thing they can do is cardboard,” Fleischman said.
Fleischman said that she had also been contacted by a constituent about concerns with plastic bags escaping the Tucker County Landfill facility and blowing in trees.
“It kind of leads to the conversation of, if we have an issue with trash escaping, basically, is it easier for the landfill or is it more cost effective to try to recycle and keep it out?” Fleischman said.
The Tucker County Landfill has been installing movable wind fencing as a measure to mitigate windblown trash at the facility. The facility recently put in a request for additional fencing to be purchased and is currently in the process of constructing a new cell to accept additional refuse.
Landfill Director Jody Alderman said that this past fall the Landfill purchased five new panels of fencing (125 linear feet) at a cost of $42,000. The Landfill is budgeting to purchase an additional five panels this fall using a SWMB grant application to help in the purchase, as they had done twice in the past.
Alderman said the Landfill also utilizes netting between stationary fencing to aid in the capture of windblown trash as well. The Landfill purchased an additional 500 feet from Gorilla netting to extend some of the stationary fencing and plans to continue to purchase as time and money allows, Alderman said.
“We are also working with the Rubenstein Center to get additional help in maintaining the fence and litter pickup,” Alderman said. “However, there are not always available. Its pretty much day by day on when we receive the additional help.”
Town of Davis Mayor Al Tomson said that about a decade ago, when the area had what he called “more robust recycling,” Sunrise worked with the Tucker County Landfill and collected recycling where the cardboard is currently collected.
“Sunrise did it in the past because they were receiving grant funding,” Tomson said.
Fleischman said it was her thought that if the residents of Davis put more thought into what they were putting into the Landfill, it would serve the residents of Davis better. Council Member Joe Holmes said that while the idea is a good one, Davis only amounts to around five percent of what goes into the Tucker County Landfill.
“You’re still going to have bags flying around because we’re only five percent of what’s going in there,” Holmes said. “We should make a change for us.”
Tomson said that in his house, half of what his house produced was recyclable materials under the old program, now it all goes to the Landfill.
Another concern raised by not only the Council, but from some of the residents in attendance was the Tucker County Landfill’s return to accepting chicken parts to the facility. The facility had suspended taking any chicken pending research into products and methods to mitigate odor from the facility. The facility began taking the refuse again after staff found a product that could be applied effectively to greatly eliminate odors and other issues from the refuse.
Alderman said that the Landfill utilizes odor eliminator manufactured from Atmos technologies to assist with odor on the new trash as it enters the facility. The product is applied with the Landfill’s hydroseeder, which broke down three weeks ago due to a clutch issue. As of Monday, Alderman said, the clutch repair was completed and the facility was awaiting a seal to come in. The seal, which arrived on Friday of the previous week, was all that was needed to complete the repair by the end of the day on Monday. Once repairs were completed, Alderman said the Landfill would resume daily spraying of refuse.
“Please keep in mind this only helps with the odor of the trash and will not eliminate the smell of the gas that’s an entirely different issue,” Alderman said.
The Landfill had previously been in negotiations for a company to capture and process the methane gas produced within the Landfill for sale to the natural gas pipeline. However, the company backed out of the project after reconsidering the amount of gas the facility produced and determining that it was too low to meet the needs of operations. There has been interest from another, unnamed company, Alderman said, but negotiations are in the early phases.
“There has also been some interest in another company possibly interested in doing a gas recovery project, but we are still in the beginning stages,” Alderman said.
