When Inweekly interviewed him last year, the last item County Administrator Jack Brown brought up was a proposed partnership with the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority on a recycling facility.
During the last George Touart era, the county and the utility battled over landfill tipping fees and consolidation. By late 2014, they were looking at the feasibility of building a multi-million dollar solid waste processing facility that would help the two entities meet the state recycling goal of 75 percent for trash collections.
Seven companies had submitted proposals to build the facility. “Those seven will be pretty easy to whittle down, but there are a lot of different ideas,†Brown told Inweekly last December. “Steve Sorrell (ECUA executive director) and I have been working hard together and he’s been good. We don’t always agree, but we’ve agreed that we’re going to keep working.â€
The county and ECUA never agreed on an proposal. In October, ECUA decided to build a recycling facility at the county-owned Perdido Landfill after Infinitus Energy abruptly closed its Montgomery, Ala. facility that had been handling the utility’s recycling.
ECUA is investing up to $7.5 million to convert a building at the landfill into a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). The plans are for it to open spring of 2016.
Eugene, Oregon-based recycling equipment manufacturer Bulk Handling Systems has been hired by ECUA to design, manufacture and install the MRF.
The system is designed to process more than 25 tons per hour of Single Stream recyclable materials.
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