WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Watertown Mayor Jeff Smith and council member Cliff Olney are butting heads again. This time, it’s over the issue of single stream recycling.
Single stream recycling allows people to throw all their recyclables into one bin, without having to sort them. It’s a service Smith has hoped to implement in the city.
At a city council work session on Monday night, Smith and two other council members, Sarah Compo Pierce and Patrick Hickey, said they were in favor of the city partnering with Fort Drum to use their facility on post to compact recyclables, a step towards the city possibly switching to single stream recycling
But council member Cliff Olney doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
He took to Facebook earlier this week, writing in part, “DANC did a $50K feasibility study and concluded single stream wasn’t profitable, nor as efficient at recycling items. Smith knew of this study when he took his vote last night.”
Smith says Olney’s comments just aren’t true.
“The Development Authority never studied single stream recycling,” Smith said. “Yes, they did a study on a materials recovery facility, a MRF, but that is completely different than single stream recycling.”
Laurie Marr with DANC says the authority completed a more than 23 thousand dollar study on the likelihood of building a MRF facility, which could recycle materials from all three counties.
The conclusion? Building one of those isn’t very likely, because north country homes and businesses don’t produce enough recyclable materials.
“Because of the volume of recyclables that we generate among our three counties, it wasn’t feasible to pursue a MRF,” Marr told 7 News.
Olney says he stands by what he said and wants to learn more about what the future of recycling could be before he makes a decision about single stream.
“What I’m planning to do is more research and I am going to push for a work study group or work session to be able to have time to talk about and to see if there are other examples of things we could do, better,” Olney said.
If the city does move forward with single stream, a 180 thousand dollar truck would need to be purchased and an intergovernmental support agreement would need to be put in place. Also, Marr says DANC would give the city a 10 dollar per ton rebate for recycled materials if they get the service off the ground.
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