On Friday, September 5 the Town of Bentley recycling bins were moved to the Bentley Waste Transfer Station site. The town has been struggling with how to handle the problems created by the recycle bins for years.
Access will now be restricted to the hours the Bentley Transfer Site is open on Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. There will be a Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission (LRWSC) operator on site and so hopefully less contamination of the recycling bins contents, hopefully it will encourage more recycling, and hopefully less stuff will be left behind.
The transfer station is owned and operated by the Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission.
The town of Bentley owns the recycling trailer that accepts cans and will continue to haul it to Red Deer when it becomes full.
Waste Management owns the two recycling bins which they empty and replace regularly.
The projected cost to the town to level off an area for the bins placement could be about $8,000.
It could also cost the town another $5,000 annually, in exchange for the Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission to monitor, operate, and clean up the site as necessary.
The transfer site will more easily be able to accommodate all the services they now provide. For a newly subdivided 4.94 acre parcel of town land the LRWSC was charged $1. They will pay the subdivision and land transfer costs. The commission will now have title to a lot instead of leasing the land from the town like they had been.
The partial fence around the old site behind the arena that was "open" for anyone to access at any time has since been bulldozed and the area is being cleaned up. There are no immediate plans for the area.
Lacombe County reimburses Bentley 25 per cent of the net expense of recycling as their share of the project.
People are asked to ensure they know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the different recycling bins.