(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors last week approved an amended agreement for a recycling drop-off facility in Superior. The county contributes financially to Superior in exchange for allowing residents in unincorporated areas to also utilize the facility. Supervisor Kim Wermersen says the site there is getting bombarded since one in Orleans closed a couple years ago…
“I received a call from Superior. They were hoping to receive an additional $150 a month for recycling. They’re getting hammered over there. They’re taking in a lot of responsibility that Orleans had. They closed and a lot of that is going over there. They just can’t keep up with their loads.”
Wermersen recommended the county contribute an additional $100 a month, short of the $150 requested by the city, siting budget constraints…
“My recommendation is to give them an additional one hundred dollars a month for their recycling site. We don’t want to lose it. We lost that site we’re down to not many. It does help to have the new site at the landfill. We’ve got to get some of these businesses who are slamming these sites to start going to the landfill or start getting their own receptacles of some sort. That’s what’s killing us.”
Wermersen adds there are some other factors behind the huge increase in loads at Superior…
“What I’m hearing is it’s a couple of businesses in that area and unfortunately they’re also getting beat up a little bit from folks in the county next to us who decided they’d like to take advantage of us and so those are challenges that we’re going to have to look at in the future: we either recycle or we don’t, and if we put the pressure on those sites to do it, how can we help them and support them?”
The additional $100 a month will bring the total Dickinson county is contributing toward the facility in Superior to $450 a month. The supervisors voted unanimously to approve the increased allocation.
