DNREC seeks $150,000 to keep yard waste sites operational Residents provide few revenue generating ideas

DNREC seeks $150,000

DNREC seeks $150,000 to keep yard waste sites operational

Residents provide few revenue generating ideas

 

 

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is looking for ways to raise the necessary $150,000 to keep the county’s three yard waste drop off sites operational.

Faced with the same economic realities gripping all branches of state government, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is asking residents for input on how it can raise the necessary $150,000 to keep New Castle County’s three yard waste drop off sites operational.

More than 110 residents packed Bellevue Hall in Brandywine Hundred on April 14 for a public meeting about funding the sites, which opened last year in Bear, Brandywine Hundred and Pike Creek to give residents another way to dispose of leaves, branches and grass clippings banned from the Cherry Island Landfill.

The sites were originally funded through DNREC’s penalty fund, which is money it gathers from lawsuits against polluters, but that funding source does not work well for ongoing projects, said Jim Werner, director of air and waste management.

Each of the sites costs about $50,000 a year, which is mainly used to pay contractors to pile the yard waste and chip it into mulch, which is given to residents for free, said Werner.

Many states support yard waste programs by adding surcharges to the cost of trash pickup, he said, like the $15 surcharge levied in Pennsylvania and the $7 fee in New Jersey. While that may or may not be the right option for Delaware, without some source of funding, the yard waste sites cannot operate, he said.

But DNREC is committed to finding a way to sustain the yard waste program, he said.

“We have no intention of trying to shut these sites down overall,” he said.

Asking the General Assembly for the money is out of the question because of the budget shortfall, said Jim Short, director of DNREC’s solid and hazardous waste branch.

DNREC could save $100,000 a year if it offered no free mulch to residents at the yard waste sites and used the mulch to compensate a contractor for the cost of grinding it, he said.

But DNREC would still need to raise revenue to offset maintenance costs at the yard waste sites. Possible funding ideas include: a paid sticker program similar to the annual pass for Delaware state parks, donation boxes and fee booths.

Another option is to privatize all or part of the yard waste program and Short said Holland Mulch is working with DNREC to let the public drop yard waste at its Edgemoor location for free, though nothing has been finalized.

Short said he will go before the General Assembly next month with recommendations about how to raise money and keep the yard waste sites open, but when he turned the floor over to the public, they shared more complaints than revenue-generating ideas.

“It’s a dirty, filthy, stinky site that leaks, not only into the quarry that’s under it, but into Stoney Run Creek and we all smell it,” said Bill Lindewirgh, who lives in Delaire, 250 feet from the Brandywine Hundred site on Cauffiel Parkway.

Nearby residents complained of commercial dumping, piles of trash bags, dust created by mulch grinding at the Brandywine Hundred site and more traffic on the Philadelphia Pike.

Some, like Edgemoor resident Cheri Whitney, suggested moving the yard waste site to Fox Point State Park, where DNREC could piggyback on the state park entrance fees and Delaire residents wouldn’t have to deal with any noise or odor.

“You don’t want to burden people [who live nearby], but you’ve got to take care of the planet at the same time,” she said.

Werner said now that the $2.5 million brownfields revitalization of Fox Point State Park is complete, relocating the yard waste site there could be an option.