Recycling program seeks support for efforts

By Murray Bishoff Special to the Cassville Democrat

The Purdy City Council gave a green light to accepting a website for the city, its first, designed by the GO CAPS program in Monett, during its April 8 meeting. 

Bill Whitman, teacher for the global business and entrepreneurism strand of GO CAPS at Monett High School, introduced Hunter Taylor, who has been working on a website for the city. Taylor brought up the site on his laptop, showing different pages and photos of the city, noting he plans to add more. 

Council members, reacting to their first view of the site, responded enthusiastically. They agreed to accept the product. Whitman said the site could go live the next day, when Whitman made a public demonstration with it. City leaders eagerly encouraged activating it. 

Much of the monthly meeting focused on the Purdy Recycling Program. Gerry Wass, a retired teacher and founder of the initiative with the school district, is now in his 21st year with the undertaking. Wass, and student participant Dominic Kukovich, explained that the once-profitable Purdy operation now struggles, selling cardboard at $15 a ton. The plastic market, he noted, has collapsed. Plastic now sells for 2 cents a pound or nothing. He explained it’s now cheaper to bury plastics than to make an effort to reuse it.

Wass explained the Missouri House of Representatives has advanced a bill to dissolve all the solid waste management districts. The Purdy program has received many grants over the years from the Southwest Missouri Solid Waste Management District, covering five counties. The Missouri Senate stopped the process on April 13 and sent a bill back to an interim committee for more review. 

The latest funding calls for cutting funding to all 22 solid waste districts by 10 percent. Tipping fees revenue going to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources will be increased from 39 to 49 percent. Wass said money made on recycling is largely going to brokers. 

“Whatever is meant to replace [the current system of grants to remediate the solid waste issue] should be demonstrably better,” Wass said. “DNR is not doing a good job. Our program exists because it was supported over the years.”

The Purdy program is now a cooperative, where participants are equal owners. Eagle Logistics in Purdy has agreed to donate a trailer rent-free for storing cardboard. The group is also now selling daffodils. Last year, recycling efforts raised only $1,600. “We’re desperately trying to stay alive,” he stressed. 

Wass explained that a real solution to solid waste is not burial, widely regarded as unsustainable. He said the real solution lies in reducing solid waste and landfill stockpiles back to the atomic level, using gasification to run a furnace at 3,000 degrees. Metals could be recaptured. Glass could become road base. Rare earth metals could be extracted from waste. Plastics could be made into a mixture of 10 different alcohols. 

A pilot program to put theoretical recycling into reality would cost several million dollars to start, plus overcoming opposition by oil companies. Wass reported visiting with city and county leaders promoting this more permanent solution. He has heard wide support for building recycling back, even from Monett city leaders who don’t want to surrender their recycling program to market trends. He urged city leaders to support the local effort. Council member Heather Van Note said the city could put word on its website directing people on how they could support the undertaking. 

In other business, the annual municipal election created no change in the city council. Heath Postlewait in the East Ward and Heather Van Note in the West Ward ran without opposition. No swearing-in ceremony was held. Postlewait was absent. 

Council members approved the municipal service agreement with Liberty Utilities, still doing business as Empire District Electric, for street lighting. Costs remained the same. The new agreement would run for two years and renew automatically every two years after that until the 10th year. The Liberty representative was absent due to an emergency. Seeing no changes, the council adopted the contract as requested. 

Kevin Cook, public works foreman, received council approval for replacing the brackets on the mounting gasket for the main pump sending wastewater effluent to Monett for processing. Cook said the pump is not working efficiently, creating significant churning that is putting extra air into the system and sending water out the side. As a result, pumps are running 18 hours a day instead of 12 hours to clear the daily load. Cost for the brackets ran $3,319.44. Cook was not sure if the brackets represented the full problem. He would not know until he could plug and drain the equipment to install the new parts. He expected correcting the problem could take up to three weeks. 

Water efficiency ran at 76 percent for the month. Eli Webb had been hired into the public works department and showed promise three days into the job. 

Police Chief Jackie Lowe reported a much quieter month in March. He had only two dog incidents to report. Two different suicidal cases required a response. Lowe also investigated an apparent fraud case where a woman’s son had been detained by ICE. She tried to hire an immigration attorney, ending up wiring more than $7,000 to two states without receiving service. That case remains under investigation. 

Council members approved Clerk Sasha Gomez’s request to attend a Missouri Rural Water Association meeting in Columbia on April 20 and 21. 

Utilities clerk Teri Garrison attended the meeting in an effort to resolve how to handle utility deposits after 12 months. Attorney Toni Hendricks was detained, so without her, the discussion was postponed. 

The next council meeting was set for May 13.