LOCAL
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
A3
County to raise fees $10 at landfi ll
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE — Tipping
fees at Wallowa County’s Ant
Flat Landfi ll will increase by
$10 a ton beginning July 1,
according to a decision by the
Wallowa County Board of
Commissioners at its meet-
ing Wednesday, Dec. 15.
“We’ve been thinking
about this for a while and we
had some diff erent thoughts
at the last meeting,” Com-
missioner Todd Nash said. “I
still think we should probably
be looking at increasing that
to $60 and putting it out there
to the fi rst of July, having
six months to message that
and everybody being able to
adjust. That puts us still at the
lower end of the spectrum of
a tipping fee for our adjoin-
ing counties. It’s appropri-
ate that we monitor it going
forward where we need to
adjust. That’s my recommen-
dation, but the discussion’s
open.”
He said at the board’s Dec.
1 meeting that Solid Waste
Manager Ed Gomes off ered
comparisons with landfi lls
in Northeast Oregon. Gomes
said Baker County charges
$57 a ton, Union County
charges $64.40 a ton and
Pendleton charges $66.30.
The fee increase is for large
disposals and won’t directly
aff ect the $10-per-barrel fee
many individuals pay, Nash
said.
Gomes and the other com-
missioners each considered
incremental increases until
reaching the $60 level, but
they ended up agreeing with
Nash.
“I think, and this is my
own opinion, to just rip the
Band-aid off and getting it
up there to where it needs to
be,” Nash said. “Rather than
muddy the waters with incre-
mental increases, I think it’s
more responsible for us to
just raise it to $60 and we’re
still at the lower end of the
spectrum of our adjoining
counties of Baker, Union and
Umatilla counties.
“I stated earlier … that
the rate at which we’re fi lling
this new pit is fairly alarm-
ing due to construction. … I
don’t think it’s going to have
a big impact on citizens —
maybe contractors will be
busy, certainly Rahn’s (Dis-
posal) will have to make
some adjustments that will
impact individuals as they
have to increase their fees for
using their service.”
Commissioner John Hill-
ock agreed.
“It’s wise that we do this
because we did not have
enough money in our bud-
get to dig the hole (for the
new pit) when we had to dig
it,” he said. “We had to shuf-
fl e things around to make that
work. … The Road Depart-
ment took it on and we leased
heavy equipment to do it our-
selves. It came out a really
good project, but still there
wasn’t enough money. We
need to charge enough money
to pay to dig a new hole as
well the crew’s expenses.”
But there was another
issue at stake.
“The big elephant in the
room is the closure of the
landfi ll in the future,” Nash
said. “None of us will prob-
ably be around to see that
happen, but need to make
sure there’s enough money to
close the landfi ll.”
Commissioner
Susan
Roberts said there’s more
than just closing the landfi ll.
“It’s not so much covering
it up,” she said. “It’s monitor-
ing it for 20 years for all the
gas emissions — that’s what
Heartfelt thanks
for the cards,
flowers
and visits.
This will remain
my favorite
hundredth
birthday
celebration!!
- Addie Marks
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Peter Ferre, of the Friends of Wallowa County Recycling, gives an update to the Wallowa
County Board of Commissioners on the county’s recycling eff orts during the commissioners’
meeting Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021.
you have to plan for. Even if
we closed it next year, we’re
on the hook for 20 years of
monitoring.”
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Peter Ferre, of the Wal-
lowa County Friends of
Recycling, gave an update
to the commissioners with
slide show on what the group
has been able to accomplish
during 2021 and its ongoing
eff orts.
“So far in 2021, we as a
county have diverted 1,242
tons of waste to recycling,”
Ferre said. “About 200-plus
tons of that came from the
recycling center and the other
roughly 1,000 tons came
from the landfi ll.”
He said the recycling
eff orts generated nearly
$87,000 in revenue for the
county recycling program —
$72,778 from mixed metals
and more than $14,000 from
cardboard, paper, plastic, tin
and aluminum.
“We expect there will be
another $3,000-$4,000 that
should come in before the
end of this fi scal year for the
recycling center.”
He put that in perspective
to recent years.
“The biggest deal about
that is that it was an increase
in tonnage and dollars from
2020, and 2020 was an
increase over 2019,” he said.
Ferre, too, was interested
in the future of the landfi ll.
“Of the 1,242 tons of
waste that was diverted, it’s
a big deal to help the land-
fi ll have a longer life cycle.
That’s a lot of waste; that’s
a lot of stuff that would’ve
been sitting in the landfi ll,”
he said. “Second, and this is
something I’d like to remind
us all of, is that 1,242 tons of
waste is really 1,242 tons of
raw materials to create new
products with minimal addi-
tional inputs. That just some-
thing I want us to remem-
ber as we export that metal,
that cardboard, that tin, that
aluminum, that plastic, it’s
going to create new products
that are going back into the
cycle.”
Recycling also pro-
tects the environment, Ferre
emphasized.
“Three, is something I
mentioned in a column that
I wrote is that every pound
of stuff you keep out of the
landfi ll helps our air quality
and our water quality,” he
said. “We don’t like to talk
about it, but the stuff that
does emit gas and it does
leach, and the more we keep
out of here and reuse, the less
of that is going to happen.”
Other benefi ts
In his slide show, Ferre
told the commissioners how
his group had received a
$38,000 grant to be used to
create a recycling program at
the schools in the county.
“What’s going to happen,
starting in January, a mobile
recycling program will pro-
vide a recyclable materi-
als pick-up service for Wal-
lowa, Enterprise and Joseph
schools,” he said.
The grant also will create
a part-time job to assist Mike
Grover, operator of the recy-
cling plant.
“Mike takes Saturday,
Sunday and Monday off ,”
Ferre said. “If you’ve been
into the recycling center
on Saturday or Sunday and
the volunteers haven’t been
there, you know what hap-
pens when you open up the
cardboard door — literally, a
whole pile of cardboard falls
on top of you. So this person
will be able to help work that
and pull that stuff back fi rst
thing Monday morning. They
will also operate the schedule
going to the schools and pick
up their recyclables. Cur-
rently, most of that recyclable
material’s going into the trash
from the schools.”
The Friends group also
has helped with reporting
requirements and outreach.
“We distributed 150 infor-
mational fl yers (according to
the slide show.) I think that
number is off because I know
that I bought like 400 infor-
mational fl yers. We reached
1,545 people via 55 messages
on Facebook about recycling
and what can be recycled and
what cannot, hours, Earth
Day, etc. We sponsored an
Earth Day event that gener-
ated 75 public contacts. We
also had our fi rst-ever Earth
Day art contest. One of our
many friends, Judy Wand-
schneider, won it this past
year with a recyclable doll
made with recyclable materi-
als that she’d collected from
the recycling center. We’re
going to make that an annual
event. In addition, we did a
fall outreach where we made
80 public contacts and got
more than 15 volunteers who
helped clean up the recycling
center.”
There’s also printed
media.
“We also published six
newspaper columns and sent
out nine newsletters to the
160-plus people on our mail-
ing list,” Ferre said. “If any of
you guys want to be on that
newsletter mailing list, email
wallowacountyrecycling@
gmail.com. Email us and we
can put you on our volunteer
list. We also had an event at
the (Wallowa Valley) Senior
Living Center with fi ve
members of the group and
generated $150 in donations.
ket. It was $80,000 a while
back he liquidated a bunch of
that.”
Roberts noted the rapid-
ity with which the landfi ll is
growing.
“Five trucks went out and
the next week, the pile was
almost as large,” she said.
The
commissioners
agreed the accumulation at
the landfi ll is largely because
of increased construction
waste.
“One of the things that
we’re seeing with all the con-
struction that’s taking place
is we’re getting a lot of con-
struction material that’s going
in the landfi ll there,” Nash
said. “I don’t know if any of
it is reusable at all. I’m not
familiar enough to know.”
Ferre asked if the board
would like the Friends group
to look into the possibility of
salvaging some of that waste.
“If you’re interested, and
I think you are, you could
take an overview of that,”
Nash said. “If there’s two-by-
fours or whatever that can be
pulled out and John would
know better than me what
goes in there, but we are fi ll-
ing up our new pit exponen-
tially faster than what we
thought we would because of
the construction going on.”
“We have some ideas on
some ways — some more
expansive ideas that the
Recycling
Modernization
Act funds could help with
that might help lower costs,”
Ferre said.
Christmas Eve Services
4pm
Lostine Presbyterian Church
175 Hwy 82, Lostine
Watching legislation
Ferre told the commis-
sioners about Oregon Senate
Bill 582, the Recycling Mod-
ernization Act, that he’s been
keeping an eye on.
“It passed; it’s going into
law Jan. 1,” he said. “It’ll cre-
ate a shared responsibility
between producers, consum-
ers and local governments.
The systemwide update will
make recycling easier for the
public, expand access to recy-
cling services, upgrade facil-
ities that sort recyclables and
create benefi ts while reduc-
ing environmental harm such
as plastic pollution. The new
law becomes eff ective Jan. 1,
but a lot of the rubber hitting
the road’s not going to come
into play until 2025. That’s
because of all the time it’s
going to take to get some of
these things into play.”
He said the bill also will
directly aff ect rural counties.
“The state is going to cre-
ate a statewide collection list:
Here’s what you can recy-
cle, whether you’re in Bend
or in Wallowa County,”
Ferre said. “The inequities
throughout the recycling sys-
tem have aff ected us in Wal-
lowa County. In La Grande,
it’s a lot easier to recycle than
in Wallowa County because
of our rural nature and our
lower population. In this bill,
they very defi nitively identi-
fi ed rural communities as a
place where focus is going
to be energized with as far
as investment in infrastruc-
ture to help us, which is a big
deal.”
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Salvage?
The
commission-
ers thanked Ferre and his
group for the work they do,
as well as county employ-
ees working in the Solid
Waste Department, particu-
larly Solid Waste Director Ed
Gomes.
“Those are thankless
jobs,” Nash said. “People
who go to the landfi ll are
not in a good mood to begin
with. Everybody complains
about everything. … Ed does
get underrated because of the
accumulation and manage-
ment of that steel and iron
that accumulates up there,
and he’s watching the mar-
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For Unto Us a
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Celebrate the birth of
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Christmas Eve
Candlelight Service 9:00pm
Enterprise Community
Congregational Church
“The Big Brown Church”
All are welcome | 301 NE First St., Enterprise