News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Before the end of 2007, Sisters will have a new recycling center in the Sisters Industrial Park.
The City of Sisters opened bids last month on the center, which will be located on a 25,000-square-foot vacant lot owned by the Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District.
GJ Miller Construction was the low bidder at $416,416, according to Public Works Director Gary Frazee.
The new facility will include four walk-in recycling bays. According to Frazee, the topography of the lot will allow residents to walk directly up to the recycle bins without climbing stairs. Trucks will be able to circle behind the bins and load them up from loading docks at the back of the center.
The operation will be much more efficient than the current center, where a truck must pull out a fill bin, drop it in the middle of Ash Street, position an empty bin and then reload the full one.
The center will also have considerably more capacity than the current facility, including a large cardboard bin that will eliminate the current city practice of loading cardboard into a truck sometimes several times a day.
The construction of the new facility is expected to begin as soon as the formal bidding process is complete. That will be welcome news to residents who have long since grown tired of looking at spillover from the recycle center and hearing the crash and boom of recyclers throwing glass into the containers at all hours.
The siting of the new recycling center is part of an agreement with the Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District that will allow the fire district to use four acres at the city's municipal wastewater treatment facility as a training site.
"They want driver training exercises for fire trucks and dragging hose," Frazee said.
The city site will provide plenty of room for extensive drills.
"It'll be great for them," Frazee said.
The land will have to be annexed into the city in order for the deal to go through. Frazee noted that the fire district agreed to a three -year arrangement at the end of which the city must have completed the annexation of the training site or it must buy the new recycle center land at market value (estimated at $200,000 to $250,000).
Frazee noted that the center will look nice, with Hardiplank siding and may eventually include a fence if the city can affordably construct something more appealing than a cyclone fence.
Frazee said that Deschutes County has expressed interest in participating in the project, since the center serves the area outside the Sisters city limits.
"They're willing to participate, but we don't know (to) what degree yet," Frazee said.
Frazee said that Glenn Miller is ready to start work and Frazee is eager to see the project underway.
"I think it's going to be a great facility," he said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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