Protect your greenbox site
The Flathead County Solid Waste Department has hired CH2MHill to conduct a study to evaluate the valley’s green box sites operational options. Members of the board clearly stated that they want to shut down the green box sites at Lakeside and Bigfork. The board has stated that they intend to include the opinions of residents in Whitefish, Kalispell, and Columbia Falls in the evaluation process. The board has refused to go on record to even acknowledge that our rural communities have the right to decide what solid waste disposal program best suits our needs.
Our houses are further apart than in the urban communities and we have coyotes and black bears in the area. If this plan is enacted we would have to buy bear-proof garbage cans and haul them to the end of our driveways once a week for someone to pick up at their convenience. (Then haul the can(s) back home that afternoon before the snow plows clear the street and destroys them.) If the plow hits the can(s) when they are full, the home owner has to clean up the mess and buy an replacement can. If you are not strong enough to wrestle a 100 pound bear-proof garbage can up & down your driveway in the snow, you will need to arrange for someone to move those cans for you (and clean up after the plow clips a can.) Oh yeah, and we each can expect to pay between $350-$600 a year for this “road side service” according to the private haulers. IF the board is successful in forcing the CH2MHill study to focus only on solid waste handling logistics and not address our rural community’s needs, and they are able to heavily weigh the study results with data from the cities, AND they exclude from the survey any questions that would enable our community to clearly show that we want to keep the site and are willing to pay our fair share of taxes to do so, then they will use these grossly biased survey results to justify shutting down the Lakeside and Bigfork green box sites.
Regardless of how the survey is structured, the garbage collection subsidy being paid by the urban areas is over. (As it should be.) All that is left is a debate over who gets to decide what happens next Will it be the communities that are using the green boxes or the cities that don’t?
This green box consolidation plan is NOT a minor change in how we handle solid waste in Lakeside and Bigfork, it is a complete gutting of the existing system. IT WILL result in a very significant increase in your cost and inconvenience, and it will create a hardship for anyone who is unable to haul bear proof garbage cans to and from a pick up point.
Stand up and be counted folks! Please take four minutes out of your busy day right now, to send an email to your county commissioner, Gary D. Krueger at gkrueger@flathead.mt.gov. Tell him that you want the survey to ask the residents of Lakeside and Bigfork what they want and if they are willing to pay for it. Demand a reply from him that clearly states his position on whether or not he favors retaining green box services or consolidation.
A solid waste management meeting with the CH2MHill re-planners is scheduled for Thursday, May 29th at 10:00 a.m. at the Foys Community Center in Herron Park in Kalispell. Bear in mind that this is the only scheduled meeting where the stakeholders (that’s what you are, Bigfork and Lakeside citizens) presumably will have their say...it is a critical meeting! If only a few of us are there, it will be a pushover for the ‘planners’ to proceed to close down the Bigfork and then the Lakeside sites.
Dan Benesch, Lakeside