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Brook Edwards of Paper Trail Inc. was a guest Thursday at the monthly meeting of the Kosciusko County Solid Waste Management District.
Edwards gave a small presentation to both the KCSWMD advisory and board Thursday about the potential for a material recovery facility.
An MRF is a central location where the community can drop off recyclable materials. The addition of the MRF will allow the collection of items the district is not currently collecting.
It will also operate as a management facility where cardboard is compacted and tied into bales. Glass items could be crushed and sorted at the facility as well.
The facility would be manned 45 hours a week, Monday through Saturday.
The KCSWMD will prepare a grant application, to be filed by June 30 with IDEM, for funding for the MRF. The grant is a matching grant, which means that IDEM will pay 50 percent and the district will pay the other 50 percent.
The district has not yet settled on a location for the MRF. Edwards toured Stafford's Waste Management Inc., and spoke with Jim Stafford, owner of the facility. Since Stafford currently hold a contract with the KCSWMD, Marsha Eikenberry, district director, thought the best plan would be to add the MRF to the existing contract. Edwards was unsure about the legal aspects of the contract and Eikenberry will look into whether or not bids must be solicited from other contractors.
In another report, the board learned the future of the permanent tire recycling project may be in doubt. Mike Lewis, owner of Lewis Salvage, is reluctant to go ahead with the project because of superfund issues.
A superfund site is a site which the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed "contaminated."
The superfund law states that any party who disposed on, or transported to, the site is liable to help in the cleanup of the site.
Currently, the law classifies scrap metal and recyclables as "waste" and Lewis would be held liable for a portion of the cleanup.
Since Lewis is already involved in three other superfund sites, he said, he did not believe it would be in his best interest to take on another possible one.
IDEM has said the law will change but until that happens, Lewis said, he does not want to take the risk.
The district is looking into other options that would allow Lewis to transport the tires without involving superfund issues.
