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Green Alliance: It is not a question of whether city will recycle, but when

Published 12:03am Wednesday, August 15, 2012

NATCHEZ — It’s not a matter of if Natchez is going to recycle, it’s a matter of when.

That was the message Green Alliance member Steve McNerney brought to the Natchez Board of Aldermen Tuesday.

“For the past three years, the Green Alliance has been working pretty hard with a variety of different groups to bring recycling to Natchez,” McNerney said.

“It is going to be state law, so it is not really a question of are we going to recycle or not, but when are we going to recycle?”

The Green Alliance has a proposed recycling program that will include having a drop-off center in the county, McNerney said, and grant money is available to help fund the program. The way the most funds could be received for that grant would be for the city and Adams County to form an interlocal agreement, and if both entities were agreeable to the idea the Green Alliance would apply for the grant, he said.

Stephanie Hutchins, who attended the meeting with McNerney, said the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality is very interested in having a recycling center in southwest Mississippi.

“Every other community (in southwest Mississippi) is going for this money right now,” Hutchins said.

“This is the time to do this, we can do it and be the beneficiaries of this money, be the beneficiary of this facility, the jobs it will bring, and then we will be the hub for all these communities that are vying for the same thing right now.”

McNerney’s proposal is more indepth and more sustainable than anything the other communities have put forward, Hutchins said.

“(McNerney) has no financial interest in this,” she said. “It is our community that will win or lose in the next few years whether we choose to do this.”

Adams County Supervisor Mike Lazarus, who was also in attendance, said a private businessman has contacted the county about using his baling equipment to recycle cardboard, and that the supervisors would like to locate cardboard drop-off sites in the Kingston and Foster Mound areas.

“Now that we have a private entity that wants to throw his money in, we are not going to stop him,” Lazarus said.

The county will soon have to develop a solid waste plan by law, McNerney said, and Natchez City Engineer David Gardner said the all of the interested parties would be meeting with the county to review the solid waste plan.

The group would actively work to educate the public as part of its mission once a plan was in place, Gardner said.

 

 

 

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  • http://www.natchezdemocrat.com khakirat

    The taxpayer shouldn’t be paying for trash pickup being the private folks will be making money but I don’t think Adams county taxpayers will be for it when they can’t even collect for trash from the downbeats!! Get real!!

  • Anonymous

    Awesome.  Now Natchezians get the wonderful opportunity to be charged extra for rifling through their own garbage.  I don’t believe for a second that McNerney has no financial interest in this.  I kind of hope he does because that might actually explain his unhealthy obsession with other people’s garbage.

  • Anonymous

    All this “green” stuff is crap.  I hate litter, people shouldn’t litter.  Throw trash away properly.  As for recycling, if Stephanie Hutchins wants to promote recycling, she should have Budweiser put their beer in refundable containers.  If they buy them back at a nickle an empty, there would be NO Bud bottles or can litter anywhere.  Keep it simple.

  • Anonymous

    “Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.”

    John Tierney – New York Times

  • Anonymous

    don’t you want to drive out to a drop off center in the county,,sort through your bottles, paper, newspaper, pour out anything left behind in the bottles and have 5 trash cans in your house to sort all this,,    i can’t wait

  • Anonymous

    “It is going to be state law, so it is not really a question of are we going to recycle or not, but when are we going to recycle?”

    Exactly what is going to be state law? Last article it was referenced “it” was in the pipeline.

    Also that cardboard recycling has been tried in years past.

    Didn’t work then or will it now.How about 1, just 1, article where this crap works and everbody is thrilled with it?

  • Anonymous

    Thirty years or more ago, I used to haul trash to the dump on Government Fleet road.  Now that was a putrid wasteland. Stinking trash, junk, and dead animals.  I once saw the dog catcher shooting dogs as he unloaded them from his truck.  I yelled obscenties at him.  Later after Waste Managment took over, I hauled some trash down to Sibley.  For a brief period, they allowed people to take it to the back dumping ground.  The difference between the two dumps was night and day.  The WM trash area was well kept, with no junk/trash/dead animals scattered everywhere.  Newly dumped trash was being bulldozed over.  If they shut it down and planted grass, a year later there would have been no sign it was a dump.  That was years ago, I don’t know about now. I save my aluminum cans, and the money goes into my pocket. Everything else goes into the trash can.  Now that’s recycling.

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