Ephrata examining recycling plan

EPHRATA — Ephrata plans to survey residents about possibly starting curbside recycling in the city.

The city council discussed the possibility during a recent meeting.

“This is what Moses Lake has gone to,” City Administrator Wes Crago said. “The plan that has been drafted at the moment is to go to a curbside, single-stream, three-cart recycling. Yard waste would be in one cart. Paper, cardboard, plastic would be in a separate cart ... and general waste would be collected weekly.”

City officials expect to implement a plan by late 2012, and as part of the process wants to collect information from residents about how important recycling is to them and how much they would pay, Crago said. Along with the survey, city staff plan to examine similar programs in cities the same size as Ephrata.

“We’d like to develop a plan using both the data from other cities and public information, public opinion,” he said. “We’d finalize the plan, negotiate with the contractor, bring that before the council.”

Staff want to know whether people support recycling, if they use the Alder Street recycling center and what format of recycling they would most support, Crago said. The options presented ranged from having a yard waste collection every other week for $2 a month to the full curbside recycling for $16 a month.

“These costs on here are realistic estimates, but they’re the worst case gross increase estimates,” he said. “Where $16 would be a realistic increase per month. However that doesn’t take into (account) the net effect if you have a smaller regular garbage, you’d be charged a smaller rate for that can.”

Residents also will be able to rank the importance of a recycling program compared to other programs and projects, Crago said. The choices include the new amenities at the pool, remodeling the Sports Complex and increasing services for the police, parks and public works departments.

Staff are hoping to get responses from at least a few hundred people, Crago said, adding he hopes to have information out as early as January.

“We try to do this in two main formats. One is with our utility billing. We can do paper surveys,” he said. “This will all be done by our staff, so paper surveys we want to limit to fairly binary questions. Do you support recycling? Pick one of the three you most like?”

The other option is using Web sites, such as Survey Monkey, to create online surveys, Crago said, adding the option allows the city to create more detailed questions.