Recycling Center To Open Back Up

More progress is being made relating to recycling options for residents of Keokuk County. According to Supervisor Chairman Mike Hadley, the Keokuk County Citizen’s Convenience Center will be reopening for regular hours on Wednesday, September 4th.

According to Hadley, regular hours, for the time being, will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

At the present time, the center will only be taking garbage and recycling from rural residents only. Hadley again stressed that the facility is currently only open to rural residents. Residents who live in an incorporated community, such as Keota or Delta, and who also own rural farmland are, at this time, not able to use the facility. That decision has been discussed at numerous county supervisor meetings this past year, with the reason for that decision being that the recycling center is subsidized by rural taxpayer money, at this time. Citizens of several communities in Keokuk County also pay for city sanctioned garbage removal services, while rural residents simply pay for the recycling center.

Future changes could be coming to the recycling center, though Hadley indicated that nothing immediate is planned. After months of discussion, the Supervisors, on June 27, unanimously voted to approve a contract with Cox Sanitation to operate the County’s Recycling Facility. The contract went into effect immediately.

Under the contract, Keokuk County will pay Cox Sanitation $5,800 per month to operate the facility, a figure that includes overall management of the facility, as well as hauling of garbage/recycling. That figure also includes some profit for Cox Sanitation.

Immediatley after the contract was approved, Keokuk County was required to obtain an operating permit from the DNR. That process took approximately one month, leading to limited operations at the facility until the permit could be obtained.

Operations at the Keokuk County Recycling Center have been a hot button issue among the supervisors, as the Board has debated with what to do about the future of the facility. At prior meetings, the Supervisors made it clear that Waste Management would not be awarded a contract again to operate the facility. The Supervisors stated at that time that they had serious concerns with rising costs and a lack of control over the taxpayer funded facility. Ultimately, after receiving bids from three haulers, including Waste Management, the board opted to contract with Cox Sanitation, citing a significant cost savings.

One option that has been floated in prior board meetings was opening up the facility for anyone and everyone to use, with users charged a user fee of some sort. That fee was initially proposed to be a 10 cent per pound of garbage fee. However, support for that fee was not unanimous, with Supervisor Deke Wood expressing serious reservations about how effective a fee would be and if it would in fact lead to less usage of the facility. For the time being, there will be no fee, however, the facility remain open only to rural residents.