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About the City By Council Member Kingery Continuing on the Enterprise funds: Hopefully this might be a good a time to share with you information about the landfill issue. It upsets me that DEQ can come in and tell us we cannot do what we have been doing, but being upset doesn't help! We generate around 25-30 tons of garbage per day! That alone is a problem we need to work on. It will take all of us working together to fix this problem. Later on we will share ideas with you that might help in our long-term reduction of refuse Presently, it appears we have two viable options for the future. If we want to continue to operate our landfill, we must comply with DEQ regulations and install a "liner" that will assure no leakage of leachate (contaminant) into the ground water under and around our landfill. That is very expensive and will need replaced with another new liner as the first one fills up. Constant monitoring for leakage of this contained garbage will be required long into the future. That too is expensive. We had a specialist working on more accurate figures for us and this is the latest information we have. At present, it looks like we would spend 3.9 million dollars just to get started with our own lined landfill, and to close our present landfill. Yup! That is $3,910,851 before we start using it. When we fill the first lined pit then it will cost another $2.9 million to get another pit ready to use. Another option will be for us to take our garbage to Casper and pay the ghost town to dispose of it and do the future monitoring. Sounds like a good deal, but there are costs of getting ready to do that also! We will need to set up a transfer station (processing our garbage for transport) and close our present landfill. We will have to close our present landfill either way! Getting ready to transfer our garbage to Casper and closing our landfill will still cost about $1,390,239, but it would save $2,600,000 in start up costs. If we “buy into” the Casper landfill operation up front, it will cost us another $400,000, but then we would pay the same rates as Casper residents to deposit our waste there, a savings of about $7 per ton. Estimating 10,000 tons per year, it would save us about $70,000 annually. The $400,000 start-up cost could be spread over 5 years, and if we quit hauling our garbage to Casper, we would get reimbursed according to the years remaining of the 5 year period. If we continued for more than the 5 years, we would not get a refund, however, by then we would have saved about $350,000. Annual capital costs will continue because equipment will continue to need replacing and maintained. Estimated annual capital costs for continued operation of our landfill is $488,608. That would be every year! Estimated annual capital costs for transferring the garbage to Casper is $207,253 so again it appears less expensive annually to ship to Casper. Then there is the cost of operation each year as we continue into the future. That will increase if we add to our garbage load. This is why it will benefit all of us if we can learn to produce less waste. Estimated costs for operating our own landfill are just over $900,000 per year. Estimated costs of transferring our garbage to Casper are $1,200,000 per year. However, we have to add in ---PAGE BREAK--- the cost of the next liner needed after we fill the first one. So for the third consideration, it would appear that it will be more expensive to operate our own landfill than to haul our garbage to Casper. In either situation, we would have the option to continue to operate an un-lined landfill for construction and demolition (C&D) materials as this does not require the lined system. The most recent information indicates it may even be cheaper to send it to Casper. Each of these options has alternatives available for dealing with the actual operation we select. At present, the employment opportunities for either option appear to be nearly the same, so our choice hopefully will not affect employment opportunities within our community. Another option (not available now, but perhaps available in the future) is an incineration plant being considered by Platte County by American Renewable Energy Associates (AREA). Tentatively it would be located outside of Guernsey. We would not be charged for taking our garbage because energy obtained from the incineration would be utilized by AREA to generate electricity. (That is AREA’s current thinking.) We would only have to transport the garbage to them. At present it appears that would be quite a savings. If this option becomes available in the future, we can change our operation at that time. Whatever infrastructure we will have in place at the time should fit in with this option. Good news! February sales tax was up 56% from January. That is 62% better than February 2010. No guarantees of course but a good sign for our community if this trend continues. Keep spending that hard earned cash!