Today, DEP officials are meeting with officials from Meadville, Crawford County, Erie County, Erie and Millcreek Township to discuss the situation.

“World Resource provides recycling services to several communities in Erie and Crawford counties,” DEP spokesman Geoff Bristow said Wednesday afternoon. “If for some reason they can’t comply with the order or otherwise they shut down and are no longer taking care of recyclables, we want to make sure communities are prepared. We don’t want to see materials piling up in containers.”

Not just a local problem

Crawford and Erie counties apparently aren’t alone. In May, the Holmes County Board of Health in Millersburg, Ohio, ordered the gates at the Holmes County Landfill locked to haulers until access roads were cleared and water seepage had been contained. The county-owned landfill is operated by World Resource.

According to Holmes County’s health commissioner, Dr. D.J. McFadden, access roads had become so blocked with trash that haulers, unable to reach the facility’s receiving area, had started going as far as they could and then dumping the waste.

Although steps have been taken to resolve the issues, and the gates have re-opened, McFadden expressed reservations during a Wednesday interview.

“We’re seeing a pattern that is similar to last year in that when we applied pressure that things were done,” he said. “We are seeing that action is being taken. The situation is being remedied. My concern is that last year after the situation was remedied there was a gradual slide back into disarray and appropriate pressure needed to be applied again.”

As for the future, “It appears as though (World Resource) responds to pressure — legal, public and political,” he said. “My concern is what happens when we stop applying pressure.”

New hauler needed? Not yet, officials say

Despite serious problems being faced by trash collector-processor World Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection officials aren’t urging anyone to find a new hauler at this point, “We’re telling them to be aware — ‘You need to have Plan B in your back pocket,’ ” DEP spokesman Geoff Bristow explained.

“We had some concerns that if material isn’t being marketed and was sitting on the floor near where municipal waste was sitting, that the recyclables would harbor rats. Therefore, we are saying that anybody who is going to apply for performance grants for recyclables that were sent to World Resource is going to have to present documentation that the items were recycled,” he continued. “World Resource tells us that they keep those records, so it shouldn’t be any problem for the communities to get those records.”

Both Brenda Schmidt of Crawford County Solid Waste Authority and Rick Williams of the City of Meadville hope so. However, the required reports haven’t been exactly forthcoming so far.

“The city should be receiving a report of how much stuff is being recycled,” Williams said Wednesday, noting that the annual report is due in February or March. “We had to beg for it for 2006 — and we’re still waiting for 2007.” While he and Stokes have talked about the 2007 report, he added the wait continues.

The authority, whose hauling contract calls for monthly reports to be submitted within 10 days after the end of each month, also continues to wait. “The contract went into effect in April,” Schmidt said Wednesday. “We should be receiving monthly reports — but they have yet to do it.”