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LEHMAN TWP. — There is a new location in the Back Mountain for residents to drop-off yard waste or pick up mulch for home landscaping projects.
The Dallas Area Municipal Authority opened a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection-permitted composting site this week on Route 118, 1.75 miles from the intersection of Route 118 and Route 415.
“We operated our composting facility down at our main building in Kingston Township, but, as the sewer division expanded, the area to work our composting got smaller and smaller,” DAMA Executive Director Larry Spaciano said. “We looked at several other properties, but we just couldn’t find a place that would meet all of our needs. With nine acres and the buildings that were here, it fit our needs exactly.
“We bought the building and property from M & M Trailer Repair for approximately $315,000 in 2013, out of DAMA funds, and have been working on it ever since. There have been a lot of improvements. We just finished painting the building and expanded the area by clearing out a wooded area where the composting is now done. We’re in full operation.”
Spaciano added that DAMA received Recycling Program Development and Implementation Grants through DEP to purchase a lot of the composting equipment and some of their vehicles.
“Right now, we’re set up for the DAMA member municipalities of Dallas Borough, Dallas Township and Kingston Township,” Spaciano said. “We also allow Lehman Township residents to use the facility because they are the host municipality.”
Kingston Township and Dallas Township previously had drop off sites at their municipalities, but they were not permitted composting sites.
According to Spaciano, Harveys Lake Borough may be interested in working out a cooperative agreement to utilize the facility, which is for residential use only.
Solid Waste Division Supervisor Bill Feher outlined the types of materials that are accepted at the facility. They won’t accept block, painted wood, pressure treated wood, decks, rock, stone or furniture.
“We’ll take any clean leaf and yard waste up to 12 inches in diameter,” Feher said. “We’ll process anything that is all-natural. We have our little motto: ‘If it didn’t grow, it’s gotta go.’”
According to Feher, the yard waste must go through a rigorous process before it’s ready for public use.
“We grind it up and put it in windrows to monitor the temperature so it gets up to about 140 to 150 degrees and cooks for a while to kill all the weeds and bacteria,” he said. “Then, we rotate and monitor it again until it stops producing temperature.
“Ideally, it should be 75 percent carbon and 25 percent nitrogen,” Spaciano added. “Grass clipping get incorporated as a nitrogen source, and the brush and leaves are the carbon source.”
Residents may pick up the mulch at no cost at the new facility or their respective municipality.
“It’s a great location with easy access,” Feher said. “It’s for the residents, that’s the bottom line.”
Spaciano believes the new facility will serve a vital purpose to the community.
“Yard waste can’t be landfilled and it can’t be burned so you have to give the people an outlet to get rid of it,” he said. “By bringing it out here and turning it into a viable resource, and allowing residents to take the material back for use in their flower beds and gardens is probably the biggest advantage of the program. It also fits into the environmental picture as far as reducing the waste stream that goes to landfills.”
According to Spaciano, there has been a lot of growth within DAMA over the years with other plans in the works.
“As a municipal authority, we can do whatever our member municipalities task us with,” he said. “When it was first chartered in 1968, DAMA strictly handled public sewers. Since then, we’ve expanded to take care of on lot sewers, solid waste and recycling, the yard waste composting program, and we’re looking into maybe doing stormwater management in the future.”
All of DAMA’s trash and recycling trucks, composting equipment, roll off containers and the roll off truck are also stored at the new composting facility.
