Solid Waste Agency, Marion at odds over garbage

CEDAR RAPIDS - Drive north on Highway 13 out of Marion and a surprising-looking, 52-foot-tall building going up makes it almost possible to miss the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency's Site 2 landfill right next door.

The $12 million building project is the agency's new Resource Recovery Center, intended to be a welcoming place where residents and companies can pull in and drop off every kind of recyclable, from the typical newspaper and glass waste to shingles, carpet and much else.

But now, some on the Solid Waste Agency board are wondering if the future of the new building is being put at risk three months before it is slated to open as Marion pursues its own plans for handling waste.

The Solid Waste Agency is an entity that operates by a joint agreement among the jurisdictions in the county with a mission to handle garbage and other solid waste, diverting what it can from the waste stream and placing the rest in the landfill.

However, Marion, one of the agency members, has made it clear for three years or more that it may turn its back on the agency and create its own venture for handling much of the solid waste that now goes to the agency's Site 2 landfill on Marion's border.

The Solid Waste Agency board has nine members, with the city of Cedar Rapids having six members, Linn County two, and the city of Marion, one.

Marion's plan

Firstly, Marion has been working to facilitate the construction of a plasma-arc technology plant that would zap garbage into energy, leaving behind a residue that can be made into insulation.

Marion remains hopeful that Plasma Power of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will construct a plant, but at the same time, Marion now is moving ahead on a second arrangement, this one with Fiberight LLC, which is proposing to build its own $22.7 million garbage-handling and resource recovery facility in Marion.

At a Marion resource recovery center, the Maryland-based Fiberight will operate a materials recycling facility, or MRF (pronounced “murf”), where it will employ a centrifuge to help sort out organic material from the garbage stream that then will be taken to the company's plant in Blairstown in Benton County to be converted into ethanol.

Upon hearing of the Fiberight proposal this week, Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said that Marion's plan to create a competing resource recovery center for Fiberight a few miles away from the Solid Waste Agency's new resource recovery center puts the agency's center “in jeopardy.”

“My concern as mayor and a citizen of Linn County is that we have a regional waste facility, and I hate to see a community break away from the regional entity and begin their own,” Corbett said. “To me that would be a duplication of services at a time when money is tight. From my first look at it, it doesn't make any sense.”

Goals aren't new

Lon Pluckhahn, Marion's city manager, expressed surprise this week upon hearing that some on the Solid Waste Agency board were questioning Marion's proposed deal with Fiberight. Pluckhahn said Marion has long talked about going its own way and seeing if it can steer much of the garbage that goes to the Site 2 landfill to new facilities in Marion.

Marion's objective for a decade - ever since the Solid Waste Agency decided to expand its Site 2 landfill on Marion's border - has been to reduce or eliminate what goes into the landfill and convert it into energy, he said.

“I guess I'm a little confused, especially with the media attention it's gotten, how they could suddenly be thinking this is new,” Pluckhahn said.

He said private market forces are at work, and Fiberight is going to move into the garbage market in the metro area and Linn County no matter what.

Asked why Fiberight has chosen to work with Marion and not the Solid Waste Agency, Pluckhahn said the answer is simple: “We've been a little more welcoming to alternatives.”

“We as a community made that commitment to zero waste three years ago, and I think that was really a signal to companies interested in doing something different with garbage that we'd be open to looking at projects that could do something different,” he said.

Marion's vision, he said, is to create an “eco-industrial park” on city land at Third Avenue and 35th Street zoned for heavy industrial and now home to Marion's own compost operation. The thought is that Fiberight could take what it needs from the garbage stream and Plasma Power could zap the rest into power and create insulation from what is left, Pluckhahn said.

He said he questioned the Solid Waste Agency's decision to move ahead with the construction of its new Resource Recovery Center at a time when the Fiberight and Plasma Power and other proposals had a chance of coming to fruition.

Fiberight has made a similar proposal for Iowa City garbage.

Future of garbage

“I think more than anything else, though, there needs to be realization that solid waste that we think of as garbage isn't going to be thought of as garbage within the next five or 10 years,” Pluckhahn said. “Whether it's Fiberight or somebody else, there are companies all over that are trying to find ways to turn that garbage into usable raw materials.”

The city of Marion has approved a letter of support as Fiberight pursues a $5.7 million grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' Solid Waste Alternatives Program to help with its proposed $22.7 million facility in Marion. The DNR program will review the Fiberight proposal on July 31, the agency said on Wednesday.

Karmin McShane, executive director of the Solid Waste Agency, said the agency remains open to a proposal from Fiberight.