Recycling center filled to the max
Garbage managers to compile comprehensive review of Blaine County?s waste management
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
Terry Schultz Photo by David N. Seelig
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With an aging facility as its cornerstone, the recycling program in Blaine County has reached its maximum capacity.
Although recyclable materials are regularly thrown away throughout the county, the 10-year-old facility couldn?t handle them even if people started putting those materials in recycle bins.
?Recycling?s necessary. It has to happen, but people have to be aware that it?s not self-supporting,? said Brett Gelskey, the manager of Blaine County?s Resource Recovery Center in Ohio Gulch. ?I?m more than max right now. I think it?s grown more than people thought it was going to.?
Blaine County?s dated recycling center was one of the points stressed at a daylong ?solid waste summit? in Ketchum last month. Participants, including members of the Southern Idaho Solid Waste district, the Ketchum-based Environmental Resource Center and local public officials, agreed the Resource Recovery Center needs upgrading before a more intensive recycling awareness campaign is undertaken.
?We?ve been slowly ramping up this recycling program without any forethought or planning,? said Terry Schultz, director of Southern Idaho Solid Waste, which includes seven southern Idaho counties.
As he walked through the Ohio Gulch facility?where recyclables are collected, baled and shipped?Gelskey ticked through a laundry list of upgrades that are needed before the facility can handle additional materials.
The drop-off bins aren?t big enough. The center is understaffed. The building is too small and doesn?t have insulation. The baler is old, slow and poorly positioned within the building.
On cold winter mornings, work doesn?t begin until noon because Gelskey must unfreeze the baler using a propane torch. Even when it?s working well, the baler takes 45 to 60 minutes to wrap 1,200 pounds of cardboard, and the center ships between 38,000 and 42,000 pounds of cardboard every week.
And then there are plastics, newspapers, glass, magazines and office paper to deal with.
?It?s tough to keep up with it,? Gelskey said.
His peers agreed. Southern Idaho Solid Waste Recycling and Public Education Coordinator Robin Baumgartner said ?serious upgrades? are needed at the recovery center.
?But expansion will depend on where they (Blaine County) want to go with it,? she said. ?Do we want to take on more materials, or do we want to cut down to basics to smooth the operation??
The over-stressed facility is not the only woe facing Blaine County?s recycling program. Increasingly, recyclable materials are arriving at the recovery center improperly sorted and even mixed with trash. A recycling bin at the Albertson?s store in Hailey was pulled after dead animals and old tires were discovered in it.
While walking through the recovery center, Gelskey pointed to a large bin meant to contain plastic. About 25 percent of the approximately 3-cubic-yard container consisted of glass and garbage.
An employee sorts the glass and trash, but the time-consuming effort sometimes proves fruitless. Gelskey said an entire truckload of plastic, which had already been sorted in Blaine County, was recently rejected by a recycling company because it contained too much broken glass. The entire load was dumped in a landfill.
?This isn?t uncommon,? he said, looking into the large bin full of plastic and broken glass. ?I get one or two of these every day. The public?s going to have to want it to happen. The more contamination, the harder it gets for us. It?s not going to continue to happen.?
One of the key outcomes of the daylong solid waste summit was a plan to compile a comprehensive trash management plan for Blaine County that could be finished in June and implemented next October. The plan would include a waste characterization study and reviews of the recycling program and disposal of construction and demolition wastes, among a myriad of other factors facing the solid waste managers.
?We need to sit down and get a clearer picture of where we are right now,? Baumgartner said. ?We?re going to go through and study it and determine what?s working now and what?s not.?
