Prospects for Kiowa County’s recycling facilities being rebuilt in the foreseeable future brightened considerably last Thursday when the State’s Director of the Bureau of Waste Management, Bill Bider, told a special meeting of the Kiowa County Commission his agency is ready to award a grant for that purpose of up to $100,000 as soon as plans for the project have been developed.
   “This is a noncompetitive grant, and you’ll need to match it with 25 percent, which means you’d need to put in $33,000,” Bider told the commissioners.
   “You come up with an idea of what you want this to be, and what you want it to look like, and then we’ll look at the cost of it and go from there.”
   Bider said he’d like Kiowa County Road and Bridge/Solid Waster Superintendent Doyle Conrad to consult with Sunflower RC&D coordinator Roger Masenthein as soon as possible to “come up with a conceptual design with the equipment you think you’ll need and then consult with your commission and then get together with us again.”
   With the County holding $53,000 they received in insurance compensation for the recycling facilities lost to the May 4 tornado, more than enough cash appears to be on hand to match its share of the State’s gift.
   In response to a question by commissioner Gene West, Bider said uncertainty as to location of the recycling facility shouldn’t hold up processing of the grant if that decision takes no more than a few weeks.
    West said he thought such a timetable was doable, after noting he wasn’t inclined to relocate the recycling building on its previous site at the old highway yard location on the south end of Greensburg.
   “Once this City grows back it would be surrounded by residential,” West said.  He said he’d been informed recently by a local realtor that a quarter of a block “north of the tracks” in Greensburg is available at a price he considered a bargain.  “That property could be purchased very cheaply,” he said.
   Bider also told the commission something his department wanted to recommend was the addition of a latex paint recycling component to the county’s recycling building.
   “I think that would be timely since there will be a lot of waste paint in the next several years with all the construction that’s already going on,” he said.  “You could just reserve a little corner of your building for that.”
   Asked whether locating the household hazardous waste facility within the recycling building was a possibility, Bider nodded, adding, “That would be fine as long as you had some separation between them so people bringing in plastic and glass don’t come into contact with those chemicals.”
   Once the issue of building the facility “green” arose, West noted that while doing so would be more expensive he’d like to see the County “move in that direction after the commitment the City has made to that…Of course, what could be more ‘green’ than building a facility to recycle?”
   In other matters…
nBider told the group they’d need to develop soon a plan and/or schedule for converting the south landfill back to receiving municipal solid waste.  The County is currently operating the landfill to receive concrete and debris.
   Bider suggested Conrad consult soon with engineering firm Kirkham Michael to “come up with a plan to put a C & D pit out there apart from the solid waster area.”
nBob Mosier said he’d recently spoken with Iroquois Director Sheldon Carpenter about the curtailment of their past practice of using clients to gather and collect recyclable materials from around the county.
  “He’d like the County to think about hiring one of their more qualified people to do that now,” Mosier said.
   West suggested such an individual might be paid with work force grant funds.