County working on Red Feather Lakes trash solution

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

During a recent town meeting with Larimer County solid waste director Stephen Gillette, Red Feather Lakes residents learned that the county is working on a 25-year lease proposal with the Colorado Division of Wildlife for land near Parvin Lake to house a large trash compactor.

Red Feather residents have been living without a trash collection point for eight months. Gillette said the U.S. Forest Service wanted the old transfer site closed down because of citizen concern over the number of bears it was attracting. He said the Forest Service gave the county plenty of warning--since August 2000--before it forced its closure in July 2004. In the meantime, Gillette said, the county made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the USFS transfer station land and then looked at other options. "Wherever we looked," he said, "landowners would call out NIMBY."

"We are now very hopeful," Gillette said, "that the county can partner with the DOW to solve this problem in Red Feather Lakes, but the proposal still has to be approved by the Wildlife Commission in either May or July, then following the commission's approval, it has to be passed by the Larimer County Planning Office." If this doesn't work out, he said, the county will have to devise another plan.

Assuming the county can go ahead, he said, the compactor should be in place by late summer. The new facility will have to meet standards, and the road into it alone will cost an estimated $100,000, he said. By shifting to a compactor, he said, a bear can sit on it, look at it, gnaw on it, but it can't get into it, so that problem should be eliminated. The only drawback with a compactor is that it can only take items less than 3 feet, so it can't be used for large household furnishings. Those kinds of items will have to be taken to the landfill, he said.

The hours of operation will be the same as the old transfer station, Gillette said, open Saturdays May through September and then the first Saturday of the month through winter.

Gillette said the county is planning a summer date for a household hazardous waste day in Red Feather Lakes. Any hazardous waste can be disposed of for free, he said, and some residents might benefit by it being a "drop and swap"--if someone wants what someone else is throwing away, they can have it.

In cooperation with the local volunteer fire department, the county is also looking at a possible location for a slash pile in Red Feather Lakes that could be burned each year, Gillette said.