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Community members look for alternative to Rock Island county recycling site closures

At the RICMWA board meeting community members expressed a want to reconsider with more public input on the issue

ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — Community members spoke up at the Rock Island County Waste Management Agency board meeting Tuesday afternoon about the decision to close the four county recycling drop off sites. RICWMA staff coordinator Brandon Melton says there is a chance the free drop off sites could be re-opened.

There are a couple of different things that could happen to do that. Melton says a board member from a city that initially voted to shut the sites down would have to overturn their vote. Even then, there would still be some time where the sites would be closed.

This is due to the fact that RICMWA already had to give their bin contractors a 90 day notice to end services. Melton saying if a board member did overturn their vote, “The board always has the opportunity to reconsider those decisions at the budgeting session. We would then have to re-enter into a new contract, go through the procurement process for identifying a vendor for those sites.”

The other option is to reconsider the sites at the next annual budget meeting. Those meetings happen in May, and Melton says this is the more likely of the options. “It will be reconsidered at the next budgeting session.”

However, for residents that it directly effects it’s a simple fact of right and wrong. Progressive Action for the Common Good member Lori McCollum saying, “We should be increasing recycling, not eliminating it.”

She’s one of many in the county that don’t have access to curbside recycling. “I use that drop off site every week because I live in a condo-plex and I don’t have access to curbside. All of the people out in the county have no access to curbside either.”

She shared that opinion with the RICWMA board Tuesday. She wants to see more public input in the decision, and at the very least a reconsideration on how to offer other options to residents. “I think it needs to be made more convenient, not less convenient,” McCollum argues.

Another county member to share his opinion with the board was Phillip Dennis. He says he does have access to curbside recycling at his home, but this isn’t something he wants to see happen. “I would say, why not figure out consolidation, better administration, maybe a teaming approach, cooperation between various entities to fund so that we don’t lose the services on the Illinois side.”

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