NATCHEZ — Nearly everyone involved with the newly formed city-county recycling program agreed that privatization of recycling is a good option.

But not everyone’s sure if the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality will provide a grant for that type of program.

In response to Tuesday’s recycling committee vote, to privatize the program, Natchez Grants Coordinator Brett Brinegar has been in talks with the DEQ to find out if they could still provide grant funding to the newest version of the plan.

On Wednesday Brinegar said she contacted DEQ officials and presented them with the privatization plan but was unable to get an answer.

“We just don’t know if the grant can be used for that,” she said.

And Brinegar said the issue is problematic on more than one level.

The first issue deals with the placement of the recycling bins that would be purchased with the grant money.

The plan calls for small household bins to be given to a percentage of city and county residents and for large volume bins to be placed at specific locations across the city and county.

Brinegar said the household bins are problematic because traditionally equipment purchased with grant money is not given to private citizens.

In the current plan residents would have the option to bring their bins to a contracted buyer or to a drop-off site in the county.

In either scenario the recyclables would go to the contracted buyer.

Brinegar said high volume bins for general public use would also be problematic if they were purchased with grant money and then their contents were collected by a private business.

The problem comes in when the bins, bought with grants, are collected for profit by a private company.

While there are no contract specifics yet committee member Dickey King said a contract would include profit sharing between the contract company and the committee.

Brinegar said she is only certain about the third component of the privatization plan.

It calls for grant money to be spent on educating the public about recycling.

King said he was surprised to find out there could be grant acquisition difficulty with the new plan.

“It’s more of a hybrid plan,” he said of the privatization.

King said the privatization plan has the potential to save money since the committee would not have to purchase or maintain equipment.

King also said he could not see why having a contracted buyer would prohibit the grant since the committee would just be bringing the recyclables to the same place even if there were no contract.

“It’s all going to the same place,” he said of the recyclables. “The end point is the same.”

The next meeting of the recycling committee is on Sept. 22.

The deadline to apply for the DEQ grant is Oct. 1.