Benton County tackles household hazardous waste

More than five years after fire leveled Benton County’s household hazardous waste collection center at the Horn Rapids Landfill, the questions keep coming.

How do I get rid of my used motor oil, paint, drain cleaner and antifreeze? When will the drop-off center reopen?

“It’s a regular theme of inquiries from citizens and residents,” said Pete Rogalsky, public works director for Richland.

The answer: Soon.

Together with individual cities, Benton County is considering turning a vacated county property on South Ely Street near West 19th Avenue into a permanent, year-round disposal site.

The site is the former home of the Benton County Road Department. It is well suited to accommodate a hazardous waste drop-off center, according to a feasibility study funded by a grant from the Washington Department of Ecology.

It has shed-style buildings and large areas of open space. If county commissioners sign off on the plan, the drop-off center would accept the moderate-level waste that accumulates in garages and under kitchen sinks — motor oil, antifreeze, drain cleaner, solvents, pesticides, cleaners and the like.

Details are still being worked out, but the collection site would likely open to Benton County residents on Saturdays and to small businesses one day during the week. Funding would come from cities, most of which receive franchise fees from waste haulers.

County residents have been hard-pressed to properly dispose of household waste since June 2010. That’s when a fast-moving fire reduced the old waste-collection site outside of Richland in a matter of minutes.

It has yet to be rebuilt, in part because its remote location put it beyond the reach of many county residents.

Franklin County has a drop-off site that serves only county residents.

Since the fire, residents and small businesses have had to wait for collection events, held two to four times a year at various spots throughout the county. Then, they had to drive to collection sites such as the Benton County Fairgrounds and to Richland and Prosser.

Telling residents to hold onto waste until the next collection event isn’t always popular, said Rick Dawson, supervisor of the land use, sewer and water section of the Benton-Franklin Health Department, which regulates solid waste.

The upshot: In the absence of an easy, immediate way to get rid of waste, some residents tuck it into their regular waste. That’s not illegal, but it is bad for the environment, health and environmental officials say.

Regular municipal waste heads to landfills. Moderately hazardous household waste poses a fire risk and can contaminate ground water. The better solution: Turn it in.

Oil, antifreeze and paint can all be recycled. Other waste can be incinerated.

Benton County isn’t alone in lacking a drop-off site for household waste, said Gary Beeker, facilities specialist lead for Ecology’s solid waste management program. Many counties rely on collection events.

Ideally, a collection site would be fully fenced to discourage off-hours dumping and would be staffed so that all material is logged, creating a paper trail. Beeker said getting a handle on household hazardous waste is important.

“It is a priority. But funding is the issue,” he said. Collection events are better than nothing, but they’re often so infrequent that a single event can attract large crowds and become logistics headaches for organizers ad participants.

“Most people want to do the right thing. They will hold onto this material until these events come around,” he said.

Turning a surplus county property into a drop-off center is a joint effort of city public works directors and the county’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee.

Cary Roe, Kennewick’s public works director, said organizers spied an opportunity when Benton County realized it would have to return unused Ecology grant money to the state.

Instead, it used $45,000 to hire HDR Engineering to study the now-vacant county yard in Kennewick and concluded it could work well as a drop-off site. Collection events would likely continue in Richland and Prosser to reach people unwilling to drive to Kennewick.

Poe said making it easy is the key to success. Making it hard guarantees failure.

“When people don’t have a way to get rid of this stuff, they don’t always make good choices,” he said.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Benton County tackles household hazardous waste."