Fourth of July in Franklin
Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86
Spotted at the Cityfolk Festival
Residents urged to reduce trash to save on hauling
33 percent of Montgomery County's refuse is recycled, but it could be more.
Friday, May 16, 2008
What can Miami Valley residents do to help prevent their trash bills from being driven out of sight by higher diesel fuel prices?
Plenty.
Extras
A front loader pushes mountains of Dayton area trash into trucks to be hauled to a dump in Logan County. 
"The future of solid waste is reduce, reuse, recycle," said Dan Graeter, assistant manager of solid waste for Montgomery County.
Rumpke Waste Inc. has contracted with Montgomery and Miami counties for $12 million annually for five years to haul trash in 50 semitrailers 70 miles south to Brown County beginning Aug. 1.
There are no easy options. The county's two trash incinerators were mothballed in 1994 because officials couldn't meet deadlines to upgrade them to tougher emissions standards and local landfill space is nearly gone, county public works director David Ricks said.
Swiftly rising diesel fuel prices will raise the cost of the contract. Somebody has to pay the bill.
Graeter said reducing the trash volume could pay dividends later by keeping charges to ratepayers in check.
He suggests residents and businesses increase recycling and homeowners should make use of a backyard compost pile to channel kitchen green waste and yard waste to better use than the landfill. Compost can be used to strengthen lawns and gardens.
Numbers tell the story. Montgomery County's annual trash heap is 1 million tons in industrial, commercial and residential refuse. Of that, 33 percent is recycled because customers segregated the reusable waste. Not bad, but there's lots of room for improvement.
The most recent study of landfill-bound local trash showed that 41 percent was from paper products such as cardboard, which can be recycled. Fourteen percent was food waste — some of it vegetable matter that can go toward compost. Another route that could encourage recycling would be to require customers to pay for their waste by the bag.
A program the county runs that can also save landfill space is a reuse enterprise in which businesses donate surplus equipment. The county provides free pick-up. The goods are redistributed to non-profits and charities.
Officials at Rumpke said the hauler will try to keep road traffic to a sanitary landfill in Georgetown manageable. The trucks likely will travel U.S. 35 and U.S. 68.
"We will work diligently to spread out the number of trucks entering the landfill throughout the day to keep traffic to a minimum," Rumpke spokeswoman Molly Yaeger said.
The trucks will be coming from three transfer stations in Miami and Montgomery counties. Transfer stations are places where street collection trucks drop their loads for sorting and consolidation.
David Ricks, Montgomery County public works director, said the Rumpke contract still represents a good deal for area residents because the two counties were able to request competitive bids for hauling both waste streams. It's the first time in Ohio that two counties have worked to cut such a deal, he said.
In a twist to the story, Rumpke is awaiting Ohio EPA approval for expanding the Brown County Landfill and hopes to have a permit by fall. Without it, the site could close in four years.
Potentially, Rumpke said, the site could handle solid waste disposal for 132 years. Regardless, the contract with Miami and Montgomery counties would be honored, Rumpke said.
Close to home, landfills have run into opposition. Waste Management Inc. this year sold property it owned on Little Richmond Road to Five Rivers MetroParks.
The 359 acres of corn fields adjacent to Sycamore State Park had been looked at as a potential landfill. It met opposition and the land is now planned to be a wetlands complex run by the parks agency.
Waste Management's Stony Hollow Landfill just won Ohio EPA approval to expand its waste disposal area on Gettysburg Avenue, a move that could keep the landfill open until 2010 or later.
Locals, who had thought the landfill would close earlier, opposed the additional 9.8-acre trash cell. The landfill is now receiving our local industrial waste, Ricks said. That can amount to about 500,000 tons per year.
Montgomery County's solid waste load represents trash from 28 municipalities and townships — including Dayton, said Ricks. Under the existing contract, the county's trash is traveling 55 miles north to a landfill in Bellefontaine.
A future possibility is incineration. Ricks said the county's site in Vandalia could be revived and the facility tied to the local power grid to contribute electricity.
Modern smoke stack technology could meet or exceed current environmental standards, he said, but the key factor is economics. If the price of oil continues to rise, incineration could become a viable option, Ricks said.
But because land remains relatively inexpensive in Ohio, land disposal remains the least expensive alternative. "We've always looked at incineration as an option," Ricks said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7407 or sbennish@DaytonDailyNews.com.
