Published: April 03, 2008 10:15 pm      

Keeping it clean

Fee to cover street-sweeping waste

FAIRMONT — Residential and commercial Fairmont utility customers may soon be paying an additional fee for sanitation services on their bi-monthly bills.

The fee will cover a more than $81,000 bill to haul waste from city streets to the landfill, a requirement that was mandated by the Department of Environmental Protection, Fairmont public works operational supervisor Joe Feltz said.

“It all has to do with saving our environment,” Feltz said. “Right now we actually stockpile (the waste) and used it over the years for various different things, but that is no longer acceptable. We are going to try to make sure it does happen to comply and do the best thing for the community.”

Officials expect to introduce an ordinance to add the fee to customer bills in the next few weeks and are hoping to make a separate line to distinguish it from the garbage rates, finance director Eileen Layman said. She added the city does not yet know exactly how much it will be per customer, but that it will be spread out among both residential and commercial accounts.

According to the DEP, Fairmont officials contacted the organization this winter and asked if the street sweeping method they were using complied with agency disposal requirements. And when the city learned that they did not, a new method had to be instated.

Feltz said he checked with other surrounding communities to find out the best and most cost-effective way to dispose of the waste collected by the street sweeper properly. He said that most just haul it to the landfill, which is what Fairmont decided to do as well. He figured out it would cost about $81,630 before transportation costs, which Feltz said the West Virginia Division of Highways has actually agreed to help with because the city sweeps many state streets as well.

Right now, Feltz said the sweepers run for about nine months and pick up about 50 tons of material a week from the city’s streets, which equals out to about 200 tons a month.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.