Washington County’s rural solid waste and recycling center will soon only be available for county residents. Up until recently, City of Washington residents used the facility. The City went to a new hauler for recycling on July 1st, which now takes the materials to the Quad Cities. At the recent county supervisors meeting a discussion was had regarding hazardous materials by city citizens to the county facility. The City is a member of SEMCO, which collects the hazardous materials for both the city and county at the county’s site.

The discussion also included talks of commercial entities. Washington City Administrator Brent Hinson recommends a potential fee for service for recyclable material from commercial entities, like a certain dollar amount per pickup truck load, “Nobody with a commercial account on our water bills is getting charged a garbage and recycling fee. So no one is paying for that service. And so I think it’s fair that if there’s, you know, now there’s things that in the past used to bring revenue as a recycling operator that don’t anymore, and I think that would be fair to work out some sort of fee schedule, you know, related to what Lynn’s (Whaley of WEMIGA Waste) end cost is.”

The Washington City Council approved no longer paying the county for residents to use the site with an end date of September 30th.