Recycling now easier in Boundary County
October 11, 2011
Claine Skeen, the superintendent at the Boundary County Landfill, knows better than most the value of recycling, and he's never stinted in his efforts to turn the "trash" that ends up in our landfill into "treasure."

Following in the footsteps of his predecessor and mentor, the late Woody Watts, his efforts have been key to keeping local garbage disposal affordable and keeping our county landfill viable, and Claine and his crew recently made a huge stride that not many in the community yet recognize.

It's now much easier to recycle here than it has ever been before.

In the past, people were asked to sort what they put into the waste stream; paper in one bin, cardboard in another, tin cans over there, aluminum cans yon. In short, it wasn't very easy to do what was necessary to do what was right.

Thanks to Claine's efforts, it's now quite a bit easier, giving one less excuse for people in this county not to take advantage of the opportunities of recycling.

And opportunity it is, even though many of us don't recognize it, or take advantage.

Were it not for the efforts of the crew at the landfill, Boundary County could be at the edge of losing the small community exemption that for several years, and at great cost, allowed our landfill to stay open.

Without that exemption, the landfill would have been closed, by federal edict, our trash would have been hauled at great cost to taxpayers, to a sanctioned waste disposal sites far distant, and the taxpayers of this county would be left paying the cost to "reclaim" a defunct landfill that's been proven not to be defunct at all.

Thanks to the efforts of county commissioners going back to Merle Dinning, Orrin Everhart, Bob Graham Ron Smith, Kevin Lederhos and Murreleen Skeen, Claine's mom, Boundary County didn't lose its landfill exemption and the landfill has remained open.

Thanks to the hard work of Woody Watts, Claine Skeen and the people who go to work there each day in the years since, the landfill is still a place where all citizens of the county can go to get rid of what we no longer have use for, at very little or no cost to county residents.

It's also become more of a place where our trash becomes a suitable product for those who might use it.

The people getting rid of the trash don't even have to travel to the landfill to take advantage of the opportunities to recycle, as advantangeous sites capable of handling the flow of solid waste are conveniently located around the county; in Naples, at 197 Deep Creek Loop, in Paradise Valley, at 963 Kootenai Valley Trail Road, at the junction of Highways 1 and 2.

There's still a little work to do ... cans, both aluminum and tin, need to be rinsed and you can't throw just anything in ... no styrofoam or plastic bags ... but you can now add cardboard, either corrogated or box board; paper, be it newspaper, junk mail or magazines, aluminum cans, tin cans and plastics, one through seven, such as milk jugs or vinegar bottles, into the same container ... it's "commingled" recycle.

Glass still needs to be separated, as do plastic bags. But the number of containers needed at the household level have been reduced by several, thanks to the efforts of the people we pay to do what most of us won't take the time to do for ourselves.

It does pay.