Recycling plant expected to be built in WV County

Recycling will take a new direction in Preston County, W.V., next month, a West Virginia Division of Natural Resources auditor told the county Solid Waste Authority on earlier this month.

"Preston County's equipment has been sitting in that building for a long time, and we aren't going to let it sit another winter," DNR Recycling Grants Program Auditor Gary W. Rogers told the SWA and interested residents.

The state owns the vertical baler, horizontal baler, glass crusher and can densifier that have gone unused for nearly two years in the building the SWA rents at the former county landfill at Reedsville. It was closed after a state labor inspector declared the building unsafe for workers.

Since then, the PCSWA has paid local garbage haulers to take recyclables, collected at Saturday pickups throughout the county, to Terra Alta, which operates a recycling program.

A plan to build a pole building at the Preston County Sheltered Workshop, with workshop employees operating it, fell through. When it did, a $50,000 state grant was lost.

The grant's gone, Rogers stressed, and an immediate solution is needed.

Denzil Metheny, owner of Joy Recycling, proposed to take the recycling equipment and run the program, with the PCSWA paying for an employee and electricity.

A modified version of that plan, outlined by SWA member Linda Alkire, met with Rogers' approval.

The authority still has to approve it, when it meets Nov. 7 at the WVU Extension Office in Kingwood.

The proposal is to move the state-owned recycling equipment to Joy. Metheny will market the recyclables collected and keep the profits, though "recycling really doesn't make much money," Metheny said.

Ted Cress, owner of S&K Sanitation, one of the firms that does the Saturday collections, agreed.

"Denzil's not going to make any money," Cress said. "The market (for recyclables) is worse than it has ever been."

The authority will pay Metheny $860 a month so he can hire an employee during a six-month trial period. It will also continue to pay the haulers $187 a month to continue the Saturday community recycling pickups and bring them to Joy.

It won't empty the authority's bank account; they have $30,000 and receive $1,200-$1,600 each month from landfill tipping fees.

"This removes from the Solid Waste Authority any profit motive we might have," Lee said of the arrangement.

"Is the SWA allowed to be a profit-making organization?" Sue Teets, of Joy Recycling, asked. "They've sat with $30,000 in their coffers for what? That is a profit."

"You do not have to own a recycling operation," Rogers told the PCSWA, but it should educate the public and coordinate recycling.

Metheny agreed to the proposal.

"We've lost $50,000 that could have already been in the county, had something been done," Metheny said. "I hate to see the equipment leave the county, because some of the prior board members worked hard to fill out those grants."

Rogers suggested the authority look at Pocahontas County's recycling program as a good example of how another rural county dealt with the problem. Dominion Post (West Virginia)