The Walla Walla City Council in Walla Walla, Washington, has established a new six-year schedule for it’s sanitation, recycling, compost and landfill rates, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports. The city is also making some changes to its solid waste disposal policies as part of the agreement.
Under the approved changes, landfill, sanitation and recycling rates will rise by about 3 percent each year. Other changes include a new provision allowing for licensed medical waste collectors to operate in the city. Additionally, tires will have their own specified landfill disposal rates under the agreement and won’t be subject to a fee scale of per-ton rates for loads with tires.
The city council also moved to remove surcharges for asbestos disposal and biomedical waste while charging separate rates for yard waste.
“The policy goals here are not to necessarily, in some cases, to charge what it costs because we don’t want to see those types of materials out in county ditches, in alleyways, and in other places like that,” Walla Walla Public Works Director Ki Bealey says in the report.
In order to encourage more residents to purchase landfill-produced compost, the council moved to abandon its tier-rated structure while lowering its fees to be more competitive.
“We had this really complicated tiered rate structure for compost that nobody really liked. And so we’re trying to simplify that,” Bealey says in the report. “We’re generating a surplus every year of compost, and we’d rather see that sold and put to good use.”