Bigfork recycling site closing Jan. 1

On Jan. 1, the recycling containers in Bigfork, Lakeside, Coram and Ashley Lake will disappear.

The Flathead County Solid Waste District’s contract with Valley Recycling ends Dec. 31. Over the summer the district decided to not renew that contract.

Instead the county decided to consolidate recycling sites and take bids from other companies in an attempt to reduce high costs associated with the recycling program. Since 1998 the program has lost over $400,000.

“Our number of sites available is decreasing but the cost per ton of running the program will be about 50 percent less,” public works Director David Prunty said.

While Bigfork will be losing its recycling for the time being, it will get it back when the new greenbox site is built near CrossRoads Christian Fellowship.

On Tuesday the county awarded a new two-year contract to Valley Recycling to provide improved services at the Somers, Creston and Columbia Falls greenbox sites as well as the county landfill between Whitefish and Kalispell.

Each site will be equipped with a 40-yard cardboard compacting unit and have two 30-yard blue bins. One blue bin will be for all paper products and the other will be for No. 1 and 2 plastics and aluminum and steel cans.

Columbia Falls has been operating with this system since 2010, and Prunty said it has proven to be less expensive and more efficient.

North Valley Refuse was the only company besides Valley Recycling to respond the county’s request for bids, and though their cost was lower they required materials be sorted at the sites, which the solid waste district didn’t want.

“That is how we have been doing it and we haul too much air in the bin,” Prunty said. “One compartment of the bin fills up and the bin has to be pulled, while the other compartments aren’t full, which has made the program very inefficient and costly.”

With comingled items the bins will be pulled only when they are completely full, reducing the hauling costs.

Prunty estimates that the operating costs for the four sites will be $100 per ton. In the 2014 fiscal year 875 tons were hauled. The cost of disposal, Prunty said is about $30 a ton.

“This program is still expensive compared to the cost of disposal, but our Board, Commissioners and citizens we hear from want us to provide this program,” Prunty said.

The county has had some expenditures associated with making the remaining sites more efficient. They spent $44,100 to purchase six of the blue boxes and $76,500 for three cardboard compactors. They already had four blue boxes that the city of Kalispell had purchased and given to the solid waste district about four years ago Prunty said. 

While they had to spend some capital up front, Prunty said the efficiency the new system will provide would make those costs not seem so large in the long run.

In addition the county is still looking at other ways to reduce the cost of recycling. They will be looking into purchasing their own truck and providing the hauling services to local recycling facilities themselves.

When the new Bigfork greenbox site opens it will be equipped with the same system as the rest of the county sites but will be funded by a special fee area rather than from the county solid waste district fund. The new Bigfork site could potentially serve as a model for what will be done in Lakeside.

In addition to recycling improvements, the county has also recently added staff to both the Creston and Somers sites, which will help improve over all site management and cut down in illegal dumping. It will however take the sites from being open 24 hour, seven days a week to being open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.