The future of your garbage

By Journal Times staff

Friday, January 14, 2005 11:04 PM CST

RACINE - The Kestrel Hawk Park Landfill, which towers 125 feet above the western edge of Racine, has between five and nine years of life left. Once it's full, what happens to the trash you expect to disappear from the curb and the taxes you pay? That will probably depend on where you live.

For the Village of Mount Pleasant, where the waste goes will depend on its contractor, said Kevin O'Donnell, the village administrator. Disposal costs are passed on through the contract which the village signs, he said. "Obviously in future years, if they have to start hauling to farther away places, I would expect higher prices."

But, O'Donnell said, successful recycling programs could affect that, reducing the amount of waste to be disposed of and thus the cost.

The city of Racine operates its own waste collection service and a couple of years ago did a study of its future options, said Richard Jones, the public works commissioner. The decision was to join the city of Kenosha, he said.

Racine trucks would take garbage to the Kenosha transfer center, a big building where waste is dumped from garbage trucks and loaded into large trucks for transport to a

landfill.

"Since they have a transfer station, they have a lot more options," he said, among them a lower cost to haul waste in bulk. The benefit to Kenosha is a larger quantity of waste to dispose of and thus more leverage to negotiate price discounts from haulers, Jones said. Kenosha would charge Racine a fee, which would be revenue for them, and Racine would have costs no greater than today's he said. Kenosha already accepts grass clippings from Racine, he added.

In the mid 1990s, there was talk about having the county establish a landfill for use by its municipalities, Jones said, but the county declined to get involved.

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