Garbage hauler making mulch

Kevin McCormack picks up a load in Tollgate. Photo by Tom Chace

Once a week, almost every business and resident in the Sisters area hauls trash carts to the curb or street edge to rid themselves of the accumulated waste and garbage.

Soon, a truck with a long arm and pincers at the end comes along and dumps the stuff into its insides.

With the exception of the area within the city limits of Sisters, trash collection in this area -- and for all of Deschutes County -- is handled by H.C.D., High Country Disposal, out of Redmond. The City of Sisters has its own equipment.

This utility, unlike electricity, is taken for granted and yet vital.

"From your driveway cart or business dumpster, we take the trash to Northwest Transfer Station off Highway 126, on the Redmond Road, where we unload our trucks," said Ron Shearer, route manager for the disposal company.

"From there the trash is compacted and hauled in huge semi-trucks to the Knott Dump Site in Bend, the only landfill in the county. As far as we can predict, this location has sufficient capacity to take care of us for years to come" he said.

While other areas in many parts of the state are asking their retail customers to separate trash into a variety of bins for recycling, in the Sisters area residents are still mixing and dumping all trash together.

"We do have two large recycling locations in the Sisters area," Shearer said.

"One downtown, behind the Fire Hall, on Ash Street between Jefferson and West St. Helens.

"The other is behind the Access Building at Black Butte Ranch, where we also maintain 16 large, commercial-sized dumpsters for Ranch residents. We have a storage space there with compartments for separating glass, metal, newspapers and cardboard," he said.

"We roll in an empty container and exchange it for the full one dragging it onto one of our trucks beds. We simply swap it out."

H.C.D. operates 12 trucks for its routes throughout the county. A typical truck can service "200 to 250 carts before heading for Northwest Transfer to dump it's load," Shearer said. "We work five days a week, hitting each home or business once a week, usually on the same day."

They also pick up trash at all county and state camp grounds.

"I hate holidays," he said, "as they throw us off our schedule and it's tough to make up a missed day. We work most of the holidays, though, really missing only Christmas and New Year's. We do work on Thanksgiving Day which surprises a lot of our customers."

He said that privately owned H.C.D. has started something new in this area. "Only one other spot in the state is doing it and that's turning waste into compost, a low grade fertilizer, by mulching yard trash. This is really a scientific test to see if we can conserve water because the mulch acts like a sponge and holds water longer."

He pointed out that commercial fertilizers, "chemical types, are dry and require much more water when they are applied. The mulch we're producing maintains its moisture."

H.C.D. is working with Deschutes Recycling, "a sister company, with the same ownership. We're selling this new product at Knott Landfill on 27th Street in Bend out beyond the Humane Society," he said.

Right now they are selling the mulch in small, one-cubic-foot bags. It can also be obtained through their Redmond location.

"It's really a very small operation," he said. "We're also trying it out with some of our equipment at Eagle Crest. We grind the waste and let it sit for 60 days before we package it for resale."