Kittitas SWMP Update_Approved_(2020-07-09)

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2020 Solid Waste and Moderate Risk Waste Management Plan Update AX0304191054PDX 4-9 4.3.3 Urban/Rural Service Areas The Waste Not Washington Act includes amendments to Chapter 70.95 RCW with provisions to develop criteria for designating areas as urban or rural. In urban areas, recyclables must be collected from single and multi-family residences. Rural areas should have drop-off recycling or buy-back centers. The Act recommends considering several criteria including anticipated population growth, the presence of other urban services, and density of commercial and industrial properties as well as geographic boundaries and transportation corridors. To ensure that this SWMP is consistent with the Act as well as other planning documents within the County, the SWAC utilizes the urban/rural designations adopted in the County's Growth Management Plan contained in the County’s 2016 Comprehensive Plan. As of today, it is not cost effective for private haulers to provide curbside recycling service for the remaining urban communities in Kittitas County that meet the definition of urban (i.e., Cle Elum, South Cle Elum, Kittitas, Roslyn). The total population of these four towns represent only 11 percent of the total population in the County and an average population density less than half of what is found in Ellensburg (1,147 people/square mile in the four towns versus 2,563 people/square mile; see Table 5-4). It is not economically feasible to provide curbside services to such low-density and small populations. This would result in unreasonable cost impacts to the ratepayer. In addition, current recycling market conditions make it is even more challenging to consider changes to the existing recycling programs. Currently, the cost to the County to collect (via drop-box) and haul (to the material recovery facility for processing) recyclables already exceeds the cost to collect MSW (at the transfer station) and haul (to the landfill). Factors that contribute to elevated recycling costs include: strict contamination limits which is requiring more processing, unstable markets, and long distances to markets. This is further evidence that additional curbside service is currently not feasible. The County currently provides recycling drop-off service (at no cost to the customer) at the two County owned transfer stations. These provide recycling services within a reasonable distance to all urban residents. Table 5-3 provides average distance to drop-off service for each of the included urban areas, which range from 1 to 6.3 miles with an overall average of 2.5 miles. In addition, there are a number of private recyclers that also provide additional locations for county residents to recycle various materials. These are described further later in this section. Although the drop-off service is consistently utilized by County residents, the County does not have available data that could be used to track the number of customers that use the drop boxes or the tons of recyclables collected at drop-boxes by each individual urban area. Drop-off services are located before the scale house and customers come and go as they please, without being specifically tracked. The County has data that shows the quantity of recyclables in each drop-box (e.g., cardboard drop box), but it does not know what percentage of that particular drop box is delivered from each of the urban areas. The county does keep track of the total MSW that is delivered to each of its transfer stations and the number of customers that deliver waste annually (see Table 6-3). As shown in Table 6-3, in 2018 60,275 customers delivered MSW to the Ellensburg transfer station and 37,337 customers delivered MSW to the Upper County transfer station. Those transfer stations received 26,386 tons of MSW and 10,678 tons MSW respectively. As discussed in Section 3.2, the County has an ~11% recycling rate (which includes the drop-box sites). Several years ago the County experimented with an unmanned recycling drop-off station in the community of Vantage, but contamination was so prevalent that the station was shut down and unmanned sites have not been used since. Any addition of unattended drop boxes would increase contamination. Contamination rates for the drop-boxes have not been measured with a drop-box sort. Overall recyclable contamination rates are reported back to the County by the hauler after recyclables are transported to a materials recycling facility and mixed with other recyclables. Based on communications with the County, the current County hauler reports 20 percent contamination by weight at the material recovery facility. i) . I ,