Green light the green boxes

Flathead County has many obligations to the citizens it serves. It maintains hundreds of miles of roads, provides law enforcement and fire protection and offers green-box sites and a landfill to handle the county’s trash.

It’s the basic service of garbage collection that has come under fire recently as the county continues its push to consolidate various green-box collection sites.

We assert that it is the county’s responsibility to provide garbage service to all county residents in whatever format gets the job done most successfully. How exactly that should be accomplished has been a matter of heated debate through the years, most recently in Bigfork.

The green boxes have long been a controversial service. The Inter Lake’s archives show that 20 years ago, the county landfill board voted to close all the county’s green-box sites in the wake of illegal dumping of hazardous materials. As expected, a storm of protests followed and the county obviously didn’t follow through with that directive.

By 1997 the Columbia Falls green-box site was such a mess the landfill board chairman threatened to close it or deed it over to the city. Once again, hazardous materials — even paint stripper from a local body shop — was being dumped illegally. Since then the Columbia Falls site has been fenced and staffed, and now is the poster child for how green-box sites should operate.

Abiding by a strategic report that called for consolidation, the Solid Waste District Board in recent years closed the Marion and Kila sites and created a new green-box location off Ashley Lake Road. Folks in that area were hopping mad about losing their existing green boxes, but they’ve apparently adapted. Most recently the Essex, Nyack and Glacier Haven Inn sites were closed and a new site opened near Essex.

Now the county is in a quandary about how to proceed with the Bigfork site. It was to be closed and consolidated with the Creston and Somers sites, but after Bigfork residents vehemently opposed the planned closure, the county now is considering a new Bigfork green-box location that would be a “super site” prototype for other rural collection sites.

The county wants to create a special tax district that would require Bigfork residents to pay roughly $35 a year for the green boxes. That’s above and beyond the current annual tax assessment for the landfill.

County officials are meeting with Bigfork residents at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Bethany Lutheran Church to gauge public opinion about the proposed new trash site and tax district. Many Bigfork residents say they don’t mind paying extra if it means they can keep their green boxes, but who knows how the silent majority feels about the double taxation.

Meanwhile, Lakeside residents are waiting to see how the Bigfork situation plays out; Lakeside’s green boxes are on the chopping block, too.

It will cost more money to retain all of the county’s current green-box sites, and man and fence them to keep them safe and viable, but something has to be done. This is an investment the county must be willing to make.

If Flathead County doesn’t provide green-box garbage services to residents of this largely rural area, the result most certainly will be trash thrown into the woods and road ditches, or piled up in yards. The county has spent millions of dollars to buy up property around the landfill for future expansion, and seems to have ample funds for all kinds of building projects.

Certainly the county has the wherewithal to provide decent and safe green-box sites in every community that wants them.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.