Recycling already saving Thurmont money

BY JAMES RADA, JR.
Thurmont News Editor

THURMONT, Md. – Disposing of trash in Thurmont costs residents $371,700 a year or 9 cents of their 27-cent municipal property tax rate.

Faced with the growing cost of trash disposal, Thurmont town commissioners are looking for ways to reduce the amount of trash the town picks up.

“We have to do it,” said Commissioner Ron Terpko. “We have to save the environment and we have to take care of the financial end of things.”

The Thurmont Recycling Committee is preparing an ordinance to bring mandatory recycling to town. The town is also working to separate yard wastes from regular trash. Both options are attractive to the commissioners because if less waste is dumped at the landfill, the town will pay less in tipping fees.

Terpko pointed out that last year during the first three weeks of April 2005, 194.8 tons of waste was disposed of; and although the town population has grown since then, only 170.3 tons of waste was disposed of during the same period this year. He said the difference saved the town $1,370 in tipping fees.

“That’s just in three weeks,” Terpko said. “So picking up yard waste and not dumping it has an impact.”

Commissioner Bill Blakeslee said that part of that savings could also be attributed to increased recycling efforts by residents.

“Recycling is something that saves us a lot of money,” Blakeslee said.

Terpko said currently small businesses are at a disadvantage in town because it is expensive for them to recycle. However, the town’s waste hauler, BFI, has said small business recyclables could be picked up for a small fee.

“If you’re going to make recycling work, you have to make sure it works for everyone,” Terpko said.

Grass and leaves can be bagged and set out before 6 a.m. on Monday mornings. This waste is loaded onto dump trucks and taken to a local orchard where it is used.

Terpko said that in the first week of grass clipping pick up this year, about eight tons were taken to the orchard, “which saves us a little more than $544 if we dumped it at the landfill.”

Limbs and other larger debris still create a collection problem, but the issue is being studied. One option suggested was to pay town employees to staff a collection site one Saturday a month for a few hours and then take the collected limbs and soil to Heritage Park as municipal waste.

“We’re going to have something,” “Mayor” Martin Burns said. “We’ll come up with something to take care of it.”