Clearwater County recycling program

Submitted by the Clearwater County Commissioners

The Clearwater County Recycling Program has been a great success. Recent gains in market prices for recyclables have turned in great returns for the program. Sales of scrap metal collected over a one year period brought a check for over $37,000 from Sutton Salvage.

This money will be used to offset the increasing costs of trucking and land filling Clearwater County’s garbage. With this increased revenue and the corresponding money saved by reducing the amount of garbage land filled there should be no need to raise the County’s solid waste fees. The cardboard recycling has also benefited from increased sale prices. Part of the proceeds will be issued to expand the program in Weippe-Pierce areas.

There are a lot of logistical details to be worked out but the County is committed to making this work. The County has several partners in their efforts including the City of Pierce, and AITCO (which is outside of Weippe); Simmons Sanitation dba NADL in the Orofino area and an army of volunteers who help in the separation, collection and transportation of the recyclable cardboard. Riverview Construction generously donated their time and building materials to construct several collection stations that are in place in the Orofino area.

Ted Leach personally donated over 1000 hours of his time to the cardboard program. The Commissioners would like to thank everyone who is involved with this program and encourage anybody who is interested to get involved. If anyone would like to help they can call Stan Leach at 476-7132 to find out how.

Another bright spot in our efforts to reduce costs was started by Road and Bridge Supervisor Rob Simon. The severe windstorm we had last November generated a mountain of brush from blown down trees. Instead of paying to landfill this material, Mr. Simon contacted a local hog fuel grinding contractor. They were able to grind up almost all of that material at no cost to the County. The County is currently working on a program where all woody material would be separated and ground up for hog fuel instead of paying to landfill it. The Commissioners would like to thank Rob Simon and Helen Criss for their ideas and efforts to always get the vest value out of every dollar spent.