The Haines Borough’s Solid Waste Working Group on Monday brainstormed topics to be addressed in a municipal management plan, and pondered a working relationship between the borough, a nonprofit and for-profit business.

“I’m kind of stuck in my brain on how we develop a solid waste management plan when we have a private company operating,” said group chair Margaret Friedenauer.

The question of coordinating efforts between public and private stakeholders surfaced repeatedly in comments.

Community Waste Solutions, a private company that operates a 40-year-old landfill, handles most of the town’s municipal solid waste. Haines Friends of Recycling, an independent non-profit, accepts many recyclables. Each has a representative in the working group.

The group was tasked by assembly action to report to the assembly commerce committee with “recommendations surrounding borough-wide service and compliance for solid waste, how to pay for it, reducing waste options, recycling and education.” The group set a goal at its December meeting of working toward a solid waste management plan.

Friedenauer compiled a broad list of topics like a long-term contingency plan, enforcement, cost, data, recycling and income that group members expressed should be included in a plan outline.

Members analyzed solid waste management plans from other Alaskan communities like Gustavus, Wrangell, Sitka, Ketchikan and Petersburg to get an idea of how to proceed.

The group looked most heavily at Wrangell’s plan, which is the most up to date and includes details about the community’s recycling practices.

Haines Friends of Recycling representative Melissa Aronson put together a list of goals for the plan that were reviewed by the HFR board.

The document includes actions like: reducing or eliminating illegal dumping and litter, encouraging recycling, extending the life of the landfill, encouraging composting, providing trash and recycling collection areas along Haines Highway to reduce litter from visitors, strengthening and enforcing regulations against backyard burning of toxic materials, and holding collection events annually for electronics recycling, scrap metal, tires, hazardous materials, bulky items, fishnets and construction materials.

Aronson said applying the new targets would be achievable with borough assistance.

Sally Garton represents Community Waste Solutions on the board. She said her company’s rates would go up if recycling reduces the amount of trash consumers bring to the landfill. She said CWS plans to resume shipping recyclables south after installation of a baler that can compress batches of items. (The company also has discontinued shipping municipal solid waste out of state and now is composting MSW.)

Aronson said she’d like to see consumers presort recyclables from mixed trash at home. Sorting mixed trash later is expensive and introduces contamination issues, she said. “Once you’ve created a mess, it’s hard to clean it up.”

Garton and Aronson agreed that recycling is not a profit-making operation. Aronson said sales of recyclables covers only one-third of her group’s budget.

Garton described enforced separation as “one of the things that will allow (waste disposal) to work properly.” Currently, the only factor that deters people from mixing waste and recyclables is the company’s rate for accepting mixed waste, she said. She encouraged the working group to see how other communities get consumers to separate out recyclables.

Haines Friends of Recycling bales and ships out its items to facilities in the Lower 48. The nonprofit accepts self-sorted paper products, most metals, plastic #1 and #2, fluorescent tubes, printer cartridges and appliances at its facility on Small Tracts Road.

The working group on Monday also toyed with the idea of incentives, such as voucher at the second-hand store for recycling. “People like incentives,” said community representative Diana Lapham said. “If I feel like I’m getting an incentive, it makes it a little more palatable.”

But Lapham disagreed with making anything mandatory, saying the word had a negative connotation. Aronson said mandatory pickup or a garbage tax would be “messy.” “There’s going to be a lot of opposition to that because a lot of people are already recycling and managing their waste stream.”

Aronson said problems with mandatory collection include wildlife and weather tipping cans left out overnight.

Community representative Phil Reeves said he likely wouldn’t use a curbside pickup service.

“There should be some method for people who want to haul their own things,” Reeves said.

Jonathon Richardson, a former CWS employee who attended the meeting, echoed the sentiments shared earlier in the meeting by Haines Chamber of Commerce representative Reilly Kosinki, saying that the borough needs to protect itself if CWS goes under or the landfill closes.

Richardson said that CWS accepted up to four vanloads of construction materials per week from Skagway during the summer and questioned the company’s loyalty to Haines. He noted that the borough currently isn’t involved in regulating the CWS operation.

“The borough could regulate the dump. That’s what I want you to consider rather than worrying about recycling,” Richardson said.

Garton said the landfill has been in use since 1978, and is not yet half full.

The working group still plans to look at laws and regulations regarding illegal dumping or disposal of waste and requested data from Garton about the estimated amount of waste Haines residents produce.

Friedenauer said she would attempt to put an outline together for a meeting next month considering the group’s concerns.

The next solid waste group meeting will be Monday, Feb. 6 at 3 p.m. in the assembly chambers.

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