A landfill windfall?

COEUR d’ALENE — Now that the dust has settled on Coeur d’Alene’s new garbage contract, city leaders are looking for ways to apply the savings they are anticipating.

“That will come up at the next city council meeting,” said City Administrator Jim Hammond. “The question that will fall to the council is, should those savings reduce the garbage rates or should they be used to maintain the fund?”

Hammond said the city has a dedicated sanitation fund that pays for the service, but that fund is just barely breaking even.

“So we may need to use those savings to make the fund healthy,” he said. “That would make it possible to sustain the current rate without having it go up.”

Hammond said the city also has to fund a new glass recycling program as part of the new contract.

By a 5-1 vote of the Coeur d’Alene City Council on Tuesday, Northern State PAK, LLC, which owns Coeur d’Alene Garbage Service, was awarded the garbage service contract.

The contract includes a provision to establish a glass recycling

program that Coeur d’Alene Garbage will administer at cost.

Hammond said the details of that program are just now being discussed and there are several unknowns, so predicting what the new contract will save the city is difficult.

He said the current plan is to position glass recycling bins around town so residents have a place to recycle their glass, but nobody is sure at this point how many bins are needed or how many people will actually recycle their glass.

Having the ability to throw glass into the single stream recycling bin at home was considered, but that would increase the collection fee rates significantly.

The recycling program is designed to reduce the amount of waste that goes into the county landfill. While there are commodity markets for many recycled goods, the market for glass is very small. In fact, many recycling brokers won’t take single stream recyclables containing glass.

The goal for the city of Coeur d’Alene is to get the glass that winds up in the landfill out of the solid waste stream and remove it from the single stream recycling program as well.

To incentivize cities to recycle, the county rebates the city for the amount of tonnage they are able to keep out of the landfill.

“We are in the process of negotiating that rebate,” Hammond said.

The city’s current garbage contract, which expires on June 30, is with Kootenai County. The county hired Waste Management to administer that contract 16 years ago.

The city is now going to contract directly for the service. The Coeur d’Alene Garbage contract is for 10 years, with an optional six-year extension.

Hammond said as Waste Management transitions away from the existing contract it will be coming by to pick up its garbage bins, and Coeur d’Alene Garbage will deliver new ones.

The goal is to start the new contract on July 1. Hammond said city staff will be working with the garbage company to ensure a smooth transition.

“We are going to try and make sure pickup days are the same for most people anyway,” he said.