Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003143051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And it could be done, County Administrator Elmer Hodge said, without reimposing a $5-per-month garbage pickup fee.
Under the plan, all county households would be given 60-gallon rollout containers for recyclables such as paper, aluminum and plastic. Automated "one-armed bandit" garbage trucks would dump the containers once a month.
The county would sell the recyclables, unsorted, to Cycle Systems.
The program would start on a trial basis this spring and summer. The county would buy 2,000 containers and an automated garbage truck by June 30, the end of the current budget year. That would cost an estimated $257,000. Part of that cost would be offset by an $81,000 recycling grant from the regional landfill board.
In the 1990-1991 budget year, the county would expand the program to 4,600 more households.
By 1993, all 25,500 households in the county would be included in the program.
The capital cost over four years would be close to $1.5 million, according to Gardner Smith, the county's director of general services.
The county also would buy four "knucklebooms" - trucks that pick up yard debris - in 1992-1993 at an estimated cost of $420,000.
That adds up to a lot of money. But, Smith said, the expense is necessary because of a new state law that requires localities to reduce the amount of garbage they dump in landfills by 25 percent by the end of 1995.
By then, he said, the recycling program would be saving the county close to $400,000 a year in landfill dumping fees. That's based on projected dumping fees of as much as $40 a ton at the new regional landfill.
The supervisors raised no objections to the plan during a work session Tuesday. They'll be asked to give it the go-ahead in the coming weeks.
Phoenix, Ariz., and Seattle, Wash., have similar recycling programs, but this would be the first in Virginia, Smith said. Virginia Beach and Newport News have studied the idea, but haven't implemented it, he said.
Supervisor Steve McGraw said last week that he might ask the supervisors to reimpose a $5-per-month garbage fee to pay for a countywide recycling program.
He didn't.
But that didn't stop Supervisor Bob Johnson from speaking out against the fee, which the county dropped five years ago.
Only 12 percent of the garbage in Roanoke County comes from households, Johnson said. The rest comes from businesses and industries. Even if 100 percent of household garbage was recycled, the county would be only halfway to the 1995 goal. So it's not fair to make residents bear the entire cost of a recycling program, he said.
While the recycling plan was being put into action, the county would continue replacing its old rear- and side-loading garbage trucks with one-man, automated trucks.
Now, non-recyclable garbage from 6,600 households is picked up by two automated trucks. Next year's budget probably will include money for the purchase of two more automated trucks and 6,600 more 90-gallon containers.
Eventually, each household in the county would have a 60-gallon container for recylables and a 90-gallon container for non-recyclable garbage.
Also on Tuesday, the supervisors approved spending $50,000 for additional riding mowers and outside help to cut the grass in the county's parks and around its public buildings. Without the additional mowers and manpower, the grass probably could be cut only once a month this spring and summer, the supervisors were told.
by CNB