WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2017
LOCAL NEWS
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
Homeless camp clean-up tops two tons
By PHIL WRIGHT
Staff Writer
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Sorted plastics sit in bins at the entrance to the Sanitary Disposal facility Friday outside of
Hermiston.
Junk given new life
at Sanitary Disposal
By JADE McDOWELL
Staff Writer
One man’s trash be-
comes another man’s new
hubcaps in the recycling
industry.
Every day at the Sani-
tary Disposal transfer sta-
tion outside Hermiston
people add to the piles of
broken, bulky 1990-era
televisions and empty wine
bottles, glad to finally be rid
of “that junk in the garage.”
But after drop-off those
items take on a new life.
Stripped down to their
components, separated by
material and compressed
into bales, recyclable ob-
jects will eventually re-en-
ter the economy as fodder
for everything from steel
beams to egg cartons.
“It gets it out of the
waste stream, which just
makes dollars and sense,”
said Bill Kik, maintenance
supervisor for Sanitary Dis-
posal.
Late last week, dozens
of old refrigerators were
stacked in the middle of
the yard, evidence of all the
area residents who got new
appliances for Christmas.
The freon will be removed
from them and the metal
“guts” will be salvaged for
scrap metal.
The transfer station
doesn’t recycle the mate-
rials onsite, but rather col-
lects and processes them
for shipping to various re-
cyclers like Clayton Ward
Recycling in Kennewick
(plastics) and RS Davis
Recycling in Hermiston
(metals), which turn them
back into raw materials that
can be sold to manufactur-
ers in the United States and
abroad.
“That’s a market that we
sometimes have to play,”
Kik said, noting that a
few years ago the value of
cardboard plummeted for a
while thanks to market forc-
es in China, where much of
America’s recycled card-
board eventually ends up.
“A lot of places don’t have
the ability to stockpile for
long, but we have acres we
can put it on.”
Sanitary
Disposal
doesn’t have a compost
heap, but it does transfer
food waste from customers
like Wal-Mart to Pendleton
Sanitary for that purpose.
Non-recyclable
gar-
bage is pushed into trailers
bound for the Finley Buttes
Landfill near Boardman,
but Sanitary Disposal em-
ployees are inventive in us-
ing even “garbage” one last
time. Old mattresses are
folded in half by the claw
of the excavator and used
to sweep rubbish from the
platform.
“We use them as our
brooms,” Kik said. “It
keeps the floor nice and
clean.”
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Metal household appliances are separated and await being
salvaged for scrap metal at the Sanitary Disposal facility
Friday outside of Hermiston.
Recyclables are sorted
using various techniques.
The public might not dif-
ferentiate between tin cans
and aluminum cans, for
example, but if employees
put a load of cans in the
industrial wood chipper,
the same magnet that pulls
nails from the wood chips
also pulls out the tinned
steel cans from the alumi-
num ones, which are not
magnetic.
A big question Sanitary
Disposal gets is why the
city of Hermiston doesn’t
do a curbside recycling
program where residents
could have their recycla-
bles picked up instead of
taking them to the transfer
station. The city did study
the issue in 2014, but based
on interest surveys and cost
analysis, determined that
curbside recycling would
double Sanitary Dispos-
al’s labor costs while only
increasing recycling rates
by about 2 percent, which
would not allow the trans-
fer station to recoup the ex-
tra money.
“It’s all about volume,”
Kik said. “It would have to
be a mandatory thing, and
I’ve never been a guy who
likes mandatory things.”
Gina Miller, code en-
forcement
officer
for
Umatilla County, said the
Department of Environ-
mental Quality monitors
the amount of recycling
that happens in each coun-
ty and sets goals for them
based on population density
and other factors. Umatilla
County’s goal is to recy-
cle 20 percent of all solid
waste, but Miller said the
county has consistently sur-
passed that goal by 10 per-
cent or more every year.
Recycling saves irre-
placeable resources, saves
energy, saves room in land-
fills and provides cheaper
materials for manufactur-
ers, so Miller said her office
is trying to get people to
recycle more as they clean
up their properties. Last
year the county got a grant
to run a hazardous waste
collection event and Mill-
er said she is always happy
to give people information
about ways to recycle and
compost.
“We’re trying to extend
more awareness and educa-
tion,” she said. “It just has
not been a part of our cul-
ture.”
Kik said there is definite-
ly more work to be done to
help people be better about
reusing, re-gifting and re-
cycling.
“A lot of the stuff that
gets thrown away you just
shake your head and ask
why,” he said.
Each transfer station re-
ports to the DEQ how many
tons of each material were
processed and to which
recycling companies they
were sent. In 2015, Sanitary
Disposal reported it collect-
ed about 11,800 tons of ma-
terial plus 2,370 gallons of
used motor oil (bottles and
cans returned to the Bottle-
Drop Center for a deposit
are not handled by Sani-
tary Disposal). Kik said the
amounts don’t change too
much from year to year —
most people are pretty con-
sistent with the amount of
waste they produce.
Currently,
Hermiston
residents can drop off their
recycling at the transfer
station, 81144 N. Highway
395, or the recycling cen-
ter at 22 W. Harper Road.
Kik said Sanitary Disposal
is still looking for some-
one willing to let them put
recycling containers on
property somewhere else in
town to replace the former
station on Orchard Avenue
that was pushed out by the
expansion of the current
Hermiston School District
building.
He said he’s glad resi-
dents are using the stations,
although there is “a little bit
of laziness” on some peo-
ples’ part about not flatten-
ing boxes or dumping things
in the wrong containers.
When the big metal re-
cycling containers get too
beat up, they get sent to
Sanitary Disposal one last
time, where they are pro-
cessed as scrap metal and
sent to be recycled.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at 541-564-4536.
Umatilla County au-
thorities cleaned up an-
other transient camp and
threw out more than two
tons of materials last
week..
Undersheriff Jim Lit-
tlefield said the camp was
on the banks of the Uma-
tilla River adjacent to Old
River Road, about half a
mile south of the homeless
camp the sheriff’s office
cleared out in early March.
He said the sheriff’s of-
fice at that time heard ru-
mors of a second camp in
the area, but citizen com-
plaints did not start rolling
in about the site until Au-
gust and September.
The agency found the
camp spread across Ore-
gon Department of Trans-
portation property, county
property and “a sliver of
private property,” Little-
field said. The site had
about six regulars unlaw-
fully living in tents and a
small recreational trailer.
Deputies trespassed peo-
ple from the site and made
several arrests there, Lit-
tlefield said, primarily on
warrants.
Littlefield also said the
sheriff’s office checked
the camp periodically and
found everyone aban-
doned the camp by late
November or early De-
cember, but they left be-
Hermiston
Conference Center
East Oregonian
No one was injured
in a blaze that destroyed
a large storage building
at Madison Ranches in
an early morning fire
Saturday.
The Echo Volunteer
Fire Department got the
call at 6:09 a.m., and
sent 10 crew members
out to the site, three
engines and two water
tenders. Members of the
Umatilla Fire District 1,
as well as crews from
other departments in
both Umatilla and Mor-
row counties, assisted
them.
The building that
burned was located
near the junction of
Highway 207 and Ore-
gon Trail Road about 9
miles west-southwest of
Echo and about 11 miles
south of Hermiston.
Echo Fire Chief
Delbert Gehrke said he
doesn’t suspect any foul
play in the start of the
fire.
“Some type of ceil-
ing-mounted
electric
heater — that’s what
we’re guessing,” he
said.
Gehrke said it took
crews about two and
a half hours to get the
flames under control.
Jake Madison of
Madison Ranches said
the building was not sal-
vageable and will have
to be replaced.
“A portion of our
storage building was
burned,” he said. “It
was pretty substantial.
It made a steel building
melt down. Probably a
60-by-60 (square foot)
piece of the building
was lost.”
Madison said the
cause of the fire is still
under investigation, and
he doesn’t know yet
what the cost in dam-
ages will be, but he was
relieved no one was in-
jured.
“It could have been
much worse,” he said.
“We’re very grateful for
the quick response from
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community service hours
as part of their probation.
Littlefield said cleaning up
the camp was another ex-
ample of the fine work the
crews do.
Staff at Sanitary Dis-
posal reported the trash
came to 4,280 pounds, not
including the trailer, which
a tow truck hauled off. Lit-
tlefield said the garbage
filled the dumpster, but the
amount was surprising.
The sheriff’s office
planned to clean up the
camp at the start of De-
cember, but Littlefield said
winter storms delayed the
work.
By JAYATI
RAMAKRISHNAN
*EXCLUDING FRESH FLOWERS
January 7 th & 8 th
hind the trailer and a lot of
waste and debris.
The sheriff’s office
worked with the planning
department’s code en-
forcement arm and with
the community justice
department to remove the
garbage on Thursday and
teamed up with Sanitary
Disposal Inc. of Herm-
iston, which provided a
large commercial dump-
ster.
The dirty work of put-
ting camp items into the
dumpster fell to commu-
nity justice work crews,
which consist of local of-
fenders making good on
No one injured in Madison farm fire
AFTER CHRISTMAS SALE
You Never Know What You’ll Find At
A Collectors West Gun & Knife Show!
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY UMATILLA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
Umatilla County law enforcement and planning department,
with the help of Sanitary Disposal Inc. of Hermiston,
cleaned out property Thursday along the banks of
the Umatilla River on River Road where campers were
unlawfully residing in tents and a small trailer.
www.cottagefl owersonline.com
COURTESY UMATILLA COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT 1
Flames are visible glowing through the metal siding of a
storage building on Madison Ranches south of Hermiston
on Saturday morning. Firefighters from Umatilla County Fire
District 1, along with units from other Umatilla and Morrow
County fire agencies were called for mutual aid to assist
Echo Fire Department with the New Year’s Eve blaze.
all the fire departments,
from both Umatilla and
Morrow counties.”
———
Contact Jayati Ra-
makrishnan at jramakrish-
nan@hermistonherald.com
or 541-564-4534.
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