PITTSBURG, Kan. — For a year, the Southeast Kansas Recycling Center has seemed to take one step forward and two steps backward.
Within two months of opening at a more centrally located, full-of-possibilities area on Joplin Street, the center was torched by arsonists. The center was moved from a not-so-satisfactory building and location at Fourth Street and the Bypass.
In ensuing months, vandals damaged the building and equipment numerous times. Several residents waited for nightfall to illegally dump all sorts of non-recyclable items, such as mattresses and bags of garbage — most likely in an attempt to avoid the time and expense of taking them to the landfill.
It was hard for Chuck Delp, director of the center, and Jim Triplett, board member, to stomach during a time when their livelihood already was at stake.
In the past year, the center’s already meager budget necessitated letting five staff members go when the national prices for recyclables plummeted. Mixed paper took one of the worst hits, from $95 per ton a year ago to $10 per ton in January.
Paper prices have recovered a bit, now up to $60 a ton, but those in the business are not optimistic about the future.
Meanwhile, Delp said the center simply couldn’t afford any more hits. He calculated submitting police reports in the past year of $300,000 in theft or damage, and he’s preparing to pay $300 for a roll-off full of non-recyclable trash that residents have dumped in recent weeks.
Today, the center will get to take a couple of giant steps forward when a crew from Home Center Construction shows up to begin building $50,000 worth of fencing. It will line the perimeter of the eight-acre property, with a gate to be installed near the Quonset hut used by Class Ltd. for access to its glass recycling operation. It will mean the end of 24/7 access to the property by those who shouldn’t be there.
“The city wrote the check today for a revolving loan to pay for this, and half of it is forgivable,” Triplett said Thursday.
An added bonus was that the city also agreed to provide the center with $86,000 on a short-term, two-year loan to cover expenditures that eventually will be reimbursed through a grant from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
A possible one-year lag time between expenditures and reimbursement is “too large a window” for the center to afford, Delp explained.
Said Triplett: “These loans are a nice show of support to us by the city.”
And the icing on the cake?
This funding also will allow the center to install a security system to ward off would-be vandals and dumpers, who will have to find their fun somewhere else.
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