Sublette County Integrated Solid Waste Management planning meeting
by Susan Kramer
February 2, 2008
On January 18th a meeting was held in the library in Pinedale to discuss the future of solid waste and recycling management in Sublette County.
Two representatives from TriHydro, which has an office in Lander, were here to join in the discussion with Sublette County residents about the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan and Regional Landfills in Wyoming.
If you are not familiar with this topic, a few years ago, the Governor appointed an advisory board to determine how Wyoming might better handle its waste. Out of those meetings, a bill to solve the problem was passed by the State Legislature, outlining the need to regionalize our landfills. Per capita, Wyoming has a large number of landfills. A good number of the counties in Wyoming are taking advantage of the money that is being provided by the State to develop and implement plans to regionalize (2 or more counties using the same landfill) landfills.
TriHydro representatives Ken Schroeder, and Laurie Johnson are going around the state, meeting with folks in each county to identify, define and determine the economic (and environmental) feasibility of each county regionalizing.
The meeting here in Pinedale gave the attendees, who included Joel Bousman-Sublette County Commissioner; Rick Hoffman-Sublette County Solid Waste Manager; Melanie and Morrell Woffinden from Tri-Town Recycling in Marbleton; and Susan Kramer, Sally Mackey and Caroline Sulenta from Sublette Citizens for Recycling, the opportunity to explore options “outside the box” for reducing the amount of waste land filled.
Items that were identified that are hard on the baler and taking up unnecessary space in the landfill were construction and demolition debris, trees and grass that can be composted.
Also discussed was the idea of taking baled recyclables up to the transfer station to be stored. This would free up space in the recycling center for more drop offs. It would also alleviate large trucks coming into town to load up the recyclables that are taken to Salt Lake City.
Anyone who has any ideas, or would like to get more involved, can contact Rick Hoffman at 307-276-5792, or Susan Kramer at 307-367-2394.
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