PORT TOWNSEND — The Board of Jefferson County Commissioners has authorized staff to take the next steps to move toward privatizing recycling.
Solid Waste Manager Al Cairns made the recommendation in his presentation to the board at Monday’s meeting.
High costs of program operation, aligning with counties statewide and freeing up funds for waste reduction and reuse programs were the primary reasons Cairns cited for the recommendation.
“It’s very expensive to run that operation,” Cairns said. “We’ve seen low commodity values. They really tanked when the market in China closed to all West Coast markets. They’ve stabilized, but they haven’t come close to the pre-2018 market values.”
Jefferson County’s solid waste program is run as a pure enterprise fund with more than 99 percent of dollars for the recycling center coming from tipping scale fees, Cairns said.
The county spends an estimated $326,000 annually on its recycling programs, according to Monday’s agenda.
While the recycling programs are important, they are additive, Cairns said. The county’s core mandated function in regard to solid waste is ensuring the safe and efficient handling of garbage, he added.
Overall, county drop-off recycling centers have contamination rates of 30 percent, Cairns said.
The unstaffed sites are the worst, he added. Port Hadlock saw 41 tons of illegal dumping in 2024, he said.
Privatization would mean countywide curbside collection, but the collection service is not mandated. Residents could still self-haul, but the drop-off locations would be reduced, and they would pay a tipping station fee.
“If you don’t want to do curbside, there’s still going to be the option to come to a site, but you’re going to pay for that, because it’s going to be on the other side of the scales,” Public Works Director Monte Reinders said.
Low-income qualifiers can get in a minimum charge of $10 right now, Reinders said. Everyone else can get in for $20.
Cairns said a mid-level service for a 62-gallon trash cart and three bins for recycling would cost about $31 a month, or $372 per year.
State Senate Bill 5284, known as the Recycling Reform Act, effective Sunday, will require producers to reimburse recycling programs. The program will phase in starting at 50 percent in 2030 and reaching 90 percent in 2032, Cairns said. The law is expected to reduce the cost to the customer.
Drop-off locations, currently located in Quilcene, Port Hadlock, Port Ludlow, Kala Point and Port Townsend, would be reduced to a single location behind the tipping station in Port Townsend.
The recommendation was one of two options presented during the meeting. The other option would be maintaining the current program of self-hauling to designated drop-off sites.
Cairns said maintaining the county’s recycling program would likely lead to increased tipping fees. The Port Townsend site is managed by contractors whose contract will be up next spring.
“We’d hesitate to give any signal on what that increase would be without any real information in front of us, which we could only gain through an RFP (request for proposal),” Cairns said.
Reinders said he imagines the cost of a new contract could increase substantially considering that the current contract was made before 2020 and inflation has occurred since.
Also cited several times was that Jefferson County and one-third of Whatcom County are the only remaining county-run recycling programs in the state.
That reason was unsatisfactory to county resident Tom Thiersch, who criticized the rationale in a public comment.
“Saying that, ‘Oh, well, we’re the last county to do this.’ Well, what are we, a bunch of lemmings?” Thiersch said. “Why can’t we be the first to do something right? Or continue to do it the right way, instead of this force-feeding a $400-a-year program down the throats of county residents who can not afford it.”
Thiersch also said focusing on how privatizing the recycling program would improve the reduce and reuse programs is a misdirection.
“How does changing this recycling program in any way address the values one and two? How does it reduce waste? How does it encourage reuse?” Thiersch asked.
Commissioner Heather Dudley-Nollette said her interpretation of Cairns’ point regarding the reduce, reuse, recycle program was that privatizing the recycling portion would free up funds and staff time to focus on waste reduction and reuse programs.
“Correct,” Cairns said.
The next steps include notifying the current contractor that the county will not renew its contract, developing an operating agreement with Waste Connections, the haulers, and developing a level-of-service ordinance, Cairns said.
The operating agreement and the level-of-service ordinance already are in draft form in the county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Cairns said.
________
Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com
