Let the composting begin…

Warm weather has arrived with a vengeance. It was at least 74 degrees yesterday and today promises to be warmer. Many residents are taking advantage of the weather to get post-winter yard work done and large amounts of yard waste are decorating the streets of the borough. I’ve covered about a half of my frontage. Some neighbors began putting stuff out as early as the start of this month.

The borough is starting a composting operation this year. Public Works spent the winter processing the compost that was sitting unattended on the DPW property for years. The council authorized a collection point for grass clippings and brush for those who want to bring their yard waste over, and our curbside collection program began this month. Today is my neighborhood’s day for collection. We are trying something different this year and will try to keep to a once a month schedule. Already I’ve received a note of concern from a resident who relies on the curbside collection. She lives on a double lot and is a gardener and has concerns about storage between pickups. In the past, the DPW crews would move through the borough and pick up yard waste whenever they had the infrequent “free” moment, and many residents became accustomed to the practice. We’ll have to see how the schedule proceeds.

Our Recycling Grant Application was Approved!

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) conducted an Act 101 of 1988 compliance inspection during October 2006. Although we are still waiting for a  copy of the inspection report, the inspector left us with enough notes for us to apply for a  grant. The borough manager prepared the application and off it went in February 2007.

This past Monday (December 24th), we received notice of an excellent Christmas present: the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania awarded the Borough of Sayre a $499,590 grant from the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The grant will be used to enhance and
improve the municipality’s curbside recycling program, leaf waste collection and
composting program, and drop-off recycling site.

The entire proposal is estimated at $625,000, with this grant covering 90 percent of
these costs; we will be responsible for the remaining 10% local match ($125,410).

Our grant will allow us to:

• purchase 7,500 new recycling containers and 7,500 yard waste containers that will be stamped with the borough’s name on them and distributed to residents at no cost – we will track who get how many and if they are recycling, and will impose a penalty on residents who accept new containers and then do not use them or take them.
• purchase a brush chipper, which will greatly increase the efficiency of the borough’s brush collection program. We currently rent one.
• purchase a compartmentalized recycling truck to replace the borough’s 1991 truck. The current vehicle has had maintenance issues – the stop and go nature of the collection process is rough on vehicles and this one has served us well for a long time.
• purchase a hydraulic compactor for cardboard and a hydraulic compactor for plastics (and maybe other material, depending on what kind of machine we get). The inspector pointed out to us that when we haul our recycling to the Northern Tier Solid Waste Authority site at Burlingon, we are hauling mostly air. Compacting this material will improve local storage, make transportation more efficient, and reduce the number of trips we have to make to Burlington.
• purchase a skid-steer to help us manage the compacted plastics and our composting program.
• construct a 2,000 square foot storage facility for containers and equipment.
• make improvements to the existing yard waste drop-off facility, which is located behind the DPW building on South Thomas Avenue. Improvements include new fencing for screening and security, new lighting for late evening operations, and a new driving surface that will make it easier for the borough to clean up broken glass and control run-off.
• purchase an International truck chassis to accommodate a 13 cubic yard compactor and a Mack truck chassis to accommodate a 25 cubic yard compactor, which were mentioned above.
• finally, purchase new leaf vacuum and two boxes, which would replace equipment that is nearly 20 years old and doesn’t work very well.

Equipment Demonstration

Sayre Borough started a major upgrade of its recycling program earlier this year as a result of an Act 101 of 1988 compliance inspection from the Department of Environmental Protection. One of the facets of this program is composting. To date, organic material was simply dumped on the Department of Public Works (DPW) lot and left there. Now and then, when time permitted, the DPW guys would turn the piles to encourage composting, but little else was done. One of the recommendations form the inspection was to get equipment to separate the compost from the rocks, pieces of wood, trees and other materials.

Today, I attended a demonstration of one such machine (photo at upper left), which is called a trommel. The material is dumped in the top of the machine where it enters a rotating screen drum.

The fine material falls through the screen onto a conveyor belt that dumps the screened material out on one end (photo at right) while all the rocks, garbage, and uncomposted materials fall out on the other end.

The screened material looks to be very good compost and should make a good product. I don’t know what we will do with the trash material (photo at lower left) that it removes. That stuff is an odd mix of organic material (pine cones, pieces of wood, etc) and garbage.

We hope to rent it for at least a month, if it isn’t too costly, and tackle all the piles of material on the DPW lot. We estimate that we will need at least one person for that time to clear the facility. For its size, it seems remarkably easy to operate – it comes with a remote control so the back hoe operator can work from the cab of the machine while controlling the trommel.