Committee in favor of moving towards bagged leaf collection
By Kellen Olshefski
Editor
At it’s Aug. 10 meeting the City of Elkhorn Municipal Services and Utilities Committee continued discussions on the future of Elkhorn’s leaf collection service.
With the city’s solid waste contract with Advanced Disposal up for renewal in 2016 and the assumption the city will need to address an MS4 permit from the State of Wisconsin requiring the city to reduce total suspended solids in the storm drain, such as leaves, city staff said this was the time to begin coming up with a solution.
Public Works Manager Martin Nuss said Monday night, the city has two options to update its leaf collection service to meet requirements of the permit.
Nuss said the first would be to have public works staff take over the service, hauling leaves offsite to a third party. However, Nuss said this would be “expensive as all-get-out,” noting it would require the purchase of specialized equipment and require the use of city personnel.
In the second option, Nuss said residents would bag their leaves, rather than rake them out into the street as they have previously done, and Advanced Disposal would collect the leaves and haul them to a third party contractor. Under this option, Nuss said it would also eliminate the need for the city’s compost site, which requires maintenance and can be costly, costing about $10,000 to clean up this fall.
While Nuss said this option would admittedly transfer some of the cost to city residents, assuming the city requires them to purchase their own bags, something residents might not be thrilled about, it would be a much cleaner process in the long-term keeping leaves off the road and out of the city’s storm sewer system.
“It’d be an absolute advantage and therefore, we believe, we’d come pretty close just by changing that one process to meeting the requirements of the permit,” he said.
Mayor Brian Olson offered the possibility of providing citizens with a designated number of bags to help reduce the financial burden on them, something City Administrator Tapson said he has seen done through, as an example, a coupon attached to a utilities bill, though tracking how many bags residents have picked up could be difficult.
Olson requested the next time the committee discusses it, more information on what it would cost to purchase bags for city residents would be available.
Tapson said he thinks the key thing is the city needs to determine whether it can become comfortable with an approach eliminating mechanized leaf pickup and require property owners to bag leaves and either set them at the curb or take them to a drop-off facility. Tapson said if the city was comfortable with this idea, specific details about leaf collection services could be hammered out in later meetings of the committee.
Alderman Scott McClory said he thinks it’s important the city retains a drop-off site for leaves, brush and the like, as nature can be unpredictable and leaves will fall when they’re ready to fall, not in line with Advanced Disposal’s pickup schedule.
Under Nuss’s possible options for leaf collection, the city’s brush drop-off program would continue two days each week through the spring and fall.
Though the committee agreed in-house collection and current services are not options at this time and change has to come, it has not made a final decision on the proposed changes to city leaf collection services, though is only discussing options with the idea of implementing any changes potentially in the spring of 2016.
“The reason this has come up now is we want 6 months to discuss it, get it out so that people understand change is coming,” he said.
