Lakeside residents willing to pay to keep their green box site open

All who attended last Tuesday’s Lakeside Community Council meeting agreed — Lakeside residents would willingly pay more to keep the Blacktail Road green box site open despite reasons why the county wants to close it.

“I would rather pay more in my taxes,” Lakeside resident Bill Eisenlohr told Flathead County solid waste representatives during the meeting. “And not have to spend my fuel costs to go over to the Somers site.”

Although the Lakeside site won’t be closed for another 1 1/2 to two years, the Somers site on Montana 83 is where Lakeside residents will have to take their trash when the county solid waste board decides to close the Lakeside green box site.

Flathead County Public Works director Dave Prunty responded to Eisenlohr by saying that he understood, but the county is unable to raise the solid waste assessment in one part of the county and not another.

“The theory of the assessment system is that everybody pays the same,” Prunty said.

Every Flathead County resident pays an $80.73 solid waste assessment each year for the county to operate all of the green box sites. The assessment was increased twice in the last 12 years. Prunty said in order to keep the assessment at that “low” rate and meet the standards laid out by the state of Montana, Flathead County has no choice but to consolidate their green box sites.

“To staff the sites we’ve got to consolidate them so we don’t have to turn around and charge you,” Prunty said.

Issues with green box sites such as the one in Lakeside are — they aren’t gated and can be accessed 24 hours a day, they aren’t manned so people can throw out whatever they want and the county doesn’t own the property the sites are on.

Solid Waste operations manager Jim Chilton said those things can lead to a number of issues and pointed out that his crew spent six hours earlier that day cleaning out a “hobo” encampment built in the trees behind the Lakeside green box site.

“That’s one of the biggest reason’s why we need control of our sites,” Chilton said.

Their goal is for all the green box sites they run to have standard operating hours, be gated, fenced and staffed.

The Marion and Kila sites have already been consolidated and brought up to county and state standards, and the Columbia Falls site was the first one to get a makeover.

Prunty said the county saw a huge improvement in the amount of trash they pull out of the metal recycling pile in Columbia Falls. From Aug. 2009 to Jan. 2010 the county had to sift 134,000 pounds of “inappropriate waste” out of the metals pile. The Columbia Falls site was revamped in the early part of 2010. From Aug. 2010 to Jan. 2011 the county only pulled 1,100 pounds of trash out of the metals pile.

Manning the sites also makes it so people can’t take recyclable materials like metal out of the green box sites. Prunty estimated that the county makes about $120,000 a year from recycling metals. He also said if people didn’t take metals out of the green box sites, the county could add another $60-80,000 to their revenue.

The most pressing site closure on the county’s list is Bigfork’s, which Prunty is anticipating will happen sometime in the fall of 2013. Bigfork green box site users will be diverted to the Creston and/or Somers sites. After that is taken care of, Prunty said the county will focus their attention on the one in Lakeside.