DuPage County Closing Recycling Plant

Ten years after DuPage County (Ill.) opened a recycling center in Carol Stream to kick-start curbside recycling across the county, the government panel overseeing the facility has decided to close it in three months. Whether it will reopen remains to be seen.

County officials and executives of Waste Management, which operates the facility, said the plant is on its last legs because the sorting equipment is at the end of its useful life and cannot be repaired. Much of the equipment was installed when the plant was built in 1991 for $10.4 million.

In agreeing to close the plant, the county's Solid Waste Committee, which is made up of County Board members and municipal representatives, voted to cancel its contract with Waste Management. If approved by the County Board, the cancellation will take effect Dec. 1, but some committee members and county staff said equipment is likely to fail before then.

"There is a real operational problem here," said committee member Jim Addington of Westmont.

Despite the closing of the plant a county official said there is expected to be no immediate disruption of curbside recycling in DuPage.

"Curbside recycling is here to stay, whether the IPF is open or not," said Gregory Wilcox, the county public works director. "There are other recycling plants that can be used."

Lee Addleman, a region vice president of Waste Management, said trucks will still pick up recyclables at the curb. The difference will be in what happens next.

When the plant closes, the closest recycling centers will be in Chicago Ridge, Grayslake and Plainfield. Addleman said it would cost more to get recyclables to those plants--costs that could trickle down to residents.

Because the plant opened as a way to guarantee a market for recyclable material at a time when the idea was relatively new, recyclable material from virtually every community in DuPage County has made its way through the plant.

In recent years, most of the recyclables came from communities closest to Carol Stream, such as Wheaton, Glendale Heights and Winfield, Waste Management officials said. Haulers for towns such as Aurora and Naperville use the Plainfield site.

County and Waste Management officials have known about the problems with the plant equipment for several years. They have made repairs where they could, but the facility needs new equipment to operate properly, Wilcox said.

Waste Management officials said the sorting equipment was designed to last 10 years, operating eight hours a day. The equipment has been used for almost 10 years, at an average of 12 hours a day, they said.

"We have about 16 years of use on those machines," Addleman said.

A few months ago, the Solid Waste Committee recommended a last-ditch effort to keep the recycling center open by spending $3 million for new equipment. Not only would the equipment be new, but the system would allow residents to toss all recyclables into one bin, rather than separating paper from plastic, metal and glass, supporters of the plan said.

But the County Board held off approving funding because it feared it was too expensive and would have locked the government into overseeing recycling for years to come. County Board member Roger Jenisch (R-Bloomingdale), who is on the Solid Waste Committee, has led the charge, arguing that the county should get out of the recycling business and turn it over to the private sector.

"What's happening here is not a surprise to anyone," Jenisch said Wednesday. "It's the right thing to do."

Last month, a California company decided to back out of a deal to run the plant as a single-sort facility.

Wilcox said he plans to begin exploring options for the facility, from selling or leasing it to a private business, to reopening it as either a standard recycling facility or a specialized plant. One example he gave is changing the facility so it could recycle construction and demolition debris, such as bricks, concrete and drywall, which makes up 30 percent of DuPage County waste in landfills.

"This will be what the committee will have to decide," Wilcox said.

"We're really at a crossroads here," Addington said. "This is a new time for this facility." Chicago Tribune