Dive Brief:
- Medina County's Solid Waste Policy Committee approved a five-year master plan for the Solid Waste District that will allow more input from the county's three major cities, and adds a representative from the townships to draft a new countywide waste plan.
- The plan was ratified by Brunswick and Wadsworth, but the city of Medina rejected it over lack of input from their officials.
- A change in contracts last year made some cautious. The county switched from Cleveland-based Envision Waste to Kimble Cos. of Dover. Envision had operated the county-owned Central Processing Facility in Westfield Township since 1993 as a "mixed-waste" operation, but Kimble will operate it as a transfer station, taking all trash to a landfill. Last month, the county awarded a contract to Kimble to pick up recyclables at 54 drop-off locations.
Dive Insight:
Medina County took concrete steps to make sure it had wide representation for the next step, which should ease concerns about the change in contracts.
"You are the first county in the state to write a plan that outlines exactly how you’re going to handle the next plan," said Jim Skora, a senior manager with GT Environmental of Stow, OH, who was hired by the county to help develop the plan.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has 90 days to review the plan. After that, the Solid Waste District can work with the new, expanded working group to draft the next plan with more specific details about future operations. "We want to begin immediately working with this group to discuss a number of issues about how we handle our waste," said county sanitary engineer Amy Lyon-Galvin.
