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Community Corner

Company picked to run yard waste center

County will transfer operations of Orefield organics recycling site on July 1.

Lehigh County is getting out of the yard waste business as of July 1 and a private company is taking over its organics recycling center in Orefield. 

Middle Smithfield Materials of Palmerton was selected for a five-year contract to operate the center, which accepts branches, leaves, grass clippings and other yard waste and rents equipment to municipalities that do their own grinding and disposal of branches.

“This is definitely Lehigh County government getting smaller,” said County Executive Don Cunningham. The county is not required by law to offer the service and it was subsidizing the cost to municipalities, 11 of which are mandated to recycle their yard waste. “It was a high quality regional service,” Cunningham said. “It was just something we could no longer justify in difficult financial times.” 

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South Whitehall, Upper Macungie, Lower Macungie, Emmaus, Salisbury, Upper Saucon, Upper Milford and Coopersburg are among the approximately two dozen municipalities that either bring yard waste to the center, which is behind the Schnecksville Fire Co., or rent equipment and crews from it.

Middle Smithfield’s rates for accepting the organic waste will range from $5 a cubic yard for up to 1,000 yards annually to $2.50 a cubic yard for more than 7,500 yards a year, said Glenn Solt, county director of general services. But the company is open to negotiating with individual municipalities for better deals, he said. 

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Those fees are more in line with the actual cost of running the center, which the county had been subsidizing by about $250,000 a year, Solt said.  

“They’re very good,” Solt said of Middle Smithfield. “They’ve done this for many years. They know their business.” 

The county’s announcement last September that it planned to close the yard waste center met with opposition from communities that depend on it. Afterwards, Solt told municipal officials that the county would work with them to form a consortium to take over the center. But the county also put out a request for proposals for a private company to operate it in case the consortium didn’t come together in time. 

Because the center equipment was purchased with state funds, a private company can’t use it, so Middle Smithfield will bring its own, Solt said. Municipalities can still form a consortium to take over the county equipment, he said. 

Lower Macungie Township Manager Bruce Fosselman said about 10 municipalities have been meeting to try to form a consortium to do that.  

“The next step is to officially get some type of agreement together,” Fosselman said. There’s some urgency to it because his township can’t afford to pay the rental prices that Middle Smithfield plans to charge, he said. 

“Their numbers are too high,” he said. “We would never use their rental equipment. We use the equipment about 12 times a year. We are by far one of the biggest users.” 

Salisbury Township takes its yard waste to a recycling site on Liberty Road in Upper Saucon Township where branches are ground up using county equipment, said Township Manager Randy Soriano. He anticipates that the township’s spending on yard waste could double if it has to pay the new company’s rental fees. 

Emmaus has its own compost but pays for the county machinery to come to its site, said Tim Bollinger, who ran the county yard waste center and is now county general services manager, dealing with recycling and capital projects.  Upper Milford brings leaves and grass clippings to the Orefield site and rents equipment to grind  branches. Like Salisbury, Coopersburg and Upper Saucon rent county equipment for use at the Upper Saucon site, Bollinger said. 

South Whitehall’s private waste hauler brings the township’s yard waste to the county center and Upper Macungie uses some county equipment at its own compost site.

As for the seven county workers who were employed at the yard waste center, one full-timer and a part-timer have been laid off, Solt said. The county expects to lay off another part-timer. One full-timer retired and the county is hoping to find vacancies in other county departments for two remaining full-time workers, he said. 

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