As the Athens Hocking Solid Waste District unveiled its brand-new recycling trail that maps out over 200 sites across the two counties where people can submit items for reuse, repair, and recycling, its leadership also submitted its new 15-year solid waste plan to the Ohio EPA for review. Jane Forrest Redfern, the district’s director, spoke before the county commissioners to discuss some of the changes that the new plan will entail. The AHSWD updates its 15-year outlook every five years; its last plan, dating from 2018, is available on its website at ahswd.org.
As with other solid waste districts across Ohio, the AHWSD largely derives the revenue to run its programs through fees on the generation and disposal of trash within its counties. This is one aspect that affects what haulers, and in turn residents and businesses, pay for the disposal of non-recyclable waste (or, informally, garbage). Redfern said that, as part of the 2018 plan, the rates proposed by the AHSWD, and subsequently approved by its partnering townships and municipalities, were significantly lower than the district’s cost of operation. She traces this back to the mutual split, around 2015, between the solid waste district and the Athens-Hocking Recycling Center.
From the cost of equipment and facilities that the solid waste district owned at the time, “we accrued about $800,000, and instead of keeping that money in the budget, the thought was to spend down the money and keep our fees lower than they needed to be,” she explained.