Supervisors continue to review options for rural garbage collection
By Audrey Posten | Times-Register
The Clayton County Board of Supervisors (BOS) last week continued to gather feedback and review options for rural garbage collection.
Efforts come after residents firmly objected to a new plan that would have cut costs but eliminated rural garbage collections sites and required all rural dwellings to dispose of trash in Elkader. The supervisors rescinded approval of that bid and are now back to the drawing board.
Waste Management discussed options at the Dec. 26 BOS meeting, proposing placement of dumpsters at county sites that would be locked and unlocked by county employees. Kluesner Sanitation was before the supervisors last week and Hawkeye Sanitation on Jan. 7. The county’s current weekly pickup sites near Millville, McGregor, Strawberry Point, Garber, Gunder and Garnavillo are manned by a Hawkeye Sanitation truck and driver.
Kluesner Sanitation representative Craig Kluesner offered that manning the sites as they are now may be easier and less expensive than placing dumpsters.
“It’s going to be a job,” he told the supervisors. “All of a sudden [county employees] are going to leave at 4 a.m. to go plow snow. ‘Oh, I forgot to unlock the dumpster.’ Then they have to run back. There are no gates. It’s just an open parking lot.”
Supervisor Ray Peterson, who at the Jan. 2 meeting relinquished the role of board chair to Doug Reimer, agreed.
“[With the dumpsters] you’re going to have a mess, and the county guys aren’t going to want to do nothing. It’s going to be stinking and sitting around. You’ll have animals and everything else laying around,” he feared.
Peterson said the difficulty is in developing a plan contractors can bid apples to apples.
“It’s tough when everybody is coming from different angles. Does everybody have the same size dumpsters? Does everybody have the same size truck? That’s where it gets hard,” he said. “We’re trying to listen to everybody yet.”
“I’m not an expert in the garbage business. None of us are,” Reimer added. “We’re trying to get ideas to put something together, and then you guys can tell us what it’s going to cost. We’re getting there.”
The supervisors last week would not commit to a timeline. Peterson previously said service would likely remain with Hawkeye through the current fiscal year, to the end of June. But the budget process for the upcoming 2025-2026 fiscal year is underway now.
Clayton County Auditor Jennifer Garms said even March 1 would likely be too soon to get through the bidding process.
“That would be very hard, contractually, to get everything signed off and into place,” she said.
Peterson hopes to “push it along as fast as we can”—a sentiment Reimer echoed.
“I’m getting tired of talking about trash,” Reimer said.
