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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSWAC 1 Final Jan 2015 Minutes JEFFERSON COUNTY SOLID WASTE ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES – Thursday, January 22nd, 2015 Jefferson County Public Works Building, Conference Room 1. OPENING BUSINESS: Meeting called to order by John Merchant at 3:02 PM Members Present: John Merchant City of Port Townsend Hank Fly District #1 Al Cairns Port of Port Townsend Lisa Crosby District #1 Kent Kovalenko DM/Murrey’s Disposal Matt Hall Skookum Jenifer Taylor Citizen at Large Members Absent: Kathleen Kler Commissioner Staff Present: Richard Talbot PW Solid Waste Manager Jerry Mingo PW MRW/Solid Waste Coordinator Laura Tucker Public Health Education Tina Anderson PW Support Staff Staff Absent: Julie Robertson Department of Ecology No guests. There is a quorum. Approval of minutes from October 2014 meeting: Change under Old Business, Solid Waste Management Plan re: food waste stream. Replace “have a food waste compost facility as a goal in the plan?” with Suggestion that plan includes specific targets for food waste reduction. A timeline for organic waste reduction? Kent motioned and Lisa seconded to accept the minutes with correction. Motion carried. No Correspondence No Guest Speakers No Action Items 2. OPERATIONAL REPORTS: Education: Public Health, Laura Tucker There is a grant in the works for pre-consumer composting of food. WSU has a licensed compost person. There may be a food composting facility at their Marrowstone property. Public Health and WSU are offering masters composters class this spring. The focus now is the Plastics rollout. Thank you to all that have helped with the brochure. Will be going back to the classrooms with the 8 R’s (Rethink, Reuse, Reduce, Replace, Refuse/Reject, Repair, Refill and last Recycle). April or May there may be worm composting classes. There are 2 20 person classes planned for the City and the County. Plastic numbering? Yes, we are going away from numbering. Laura will cover more completely during the New Business portion of the meeting. Recycling: Skookum, Matt Hall There has been a drop in commodity pricing. Long shoremen have partially shut the ports down. There are fines and fees being putting on containers. There has not been a slowdown of material coming in. Still some contamination but not too horrible. The trailer has been down and the new baler won’t be here until mid-February. Compost: City of Port Townsend, John Merchant Still selling compost. Yard debris was down, still getting enough to operate with. Solid Waste: Public Works, Richard Talbot and Jerry Mingo Richard: Sent out the Staff Report. This week computers are being replaced and coordinating software. Fee increase went thru in January with few complaints. The additional funding has been used to replace and repair facilities. The equipment fund is frozen but operating funds are up. Discussion about increase in pick up services since fees have increased. There is about a 1% increase. Jerry: The Hazardous Waste program for the year was the same as 2013. Took in approximately 3 times as many rechargeable batteries. Participation was up 18% not including the collection event in October. The SQG program continues to decrease. Discussion about participants using up chemicals and changing to non-hazardous products. Also larger customer has contracted for disposal services. Fluorescent lights were the same as 2013. 3. OLD BUSINESS: 1. Added plastics to accepted List of Recyclables: Laura Laura passed out the “New Recycled Plastics Outreach Plan” timeline, “Input requested from SWAC members for new recycling flyers” and draft of the front page of the recycling brochure. Discussion on deli containers and pictures of containers. The brochure is planned to be included with the DM/Murrey’s calendar. Discussions from the timeline and flyers included the following: Layout of the flyer/brochure in reference to the bins. “Oops” tags given out by trash pick-up drivers Advertising in South County 2. Solid Waste Management Plan: Consultant contract has been recommended to the Board of County Commissioners for Green Solutions. Green Solutions will review, make recommendations and submit to the county. The SWAC will receive a draft to review. 4. NEW BUSINESS: 1. Waste Oil PCB testing program: Jerry Has not added burden or cost to sample. Currently doing composite samples and if testing shows PCBs, draws individual drum samples. The second testing showed PCBs. There is a 50 parts per million threshold our sample came in at 3. Our contractor has a permit to take the under 50 parts per million. Discussion on responsibility, liability, disposal and public information on contamination. 2. Lights Recycle program roll-out: Jerry The program rolled out on January 1. The lighting industry is taking of disposal of mercury containing lights. There have been communication and container supply issues. Businesses can now bring up to 10 lamps per day at no charge. The county is not reimbursed, but incurs no disposal, transportation and packaging costs. We do have some handling costs. 3. 2015-2017 Ecology CPG Grant: Richard Received a draft notification from Ecology with preliminary allocation funds available. It looks like $187 thousand dollars that we have split with Health in the past over a 2 year period. There is an enforcement grant that goes to Heath of about $162 thousand for 2 years. The grant money in recent years has been used to offset recycling costs. It frees up funding for other uses. If anyone has thoughts of other areas this could be used, let Richard know as soon as possible. 4. 2015 Solid Waste Budget adopted: Richard Has been adopted. Summary is in the SWAC Notebook on the web. 5. FROM THE FLOOR: Chair & Vice Chair Nominations: John will be retiring this June. Kent nominated Al for Chair, John seconded. John nominated Kent for Vice Chair, Hank seconded. No other nominations. Al for Chair, unanimous. Kent for Vice Chair, unanimous. In the new City amended contract with DM Disposal, 3 additional cans and 1 acceptable appliance will be picked up on the normal pick up day the week before Earth Day. There will be an environmental charge for refrigerators etc. DM is now providing $10,000 for recycling receptacles for City Streets. DM will also service the containers. The Students for Sustainability have done an audit on the containers at the Maritime Center. Kent noticed containers in Seattle that say “Landfill” instead of trash. Next meeting is March 26th. Laura brought fruit tarts to celebrate Richard retiring next month. Meeting adjourned at 4:33 P.M.