Field Office Compliance - Assistance

Assistance ID - 65671
North Central Iowa Regional Sanitary Landfill - 310204356
2150 South 22nd Street Fort Dodge, IA 50501
Webster County

FO 2

Report
File Name File Type File Date Note
Comments
12/17/2013 Rick Taylor called me from Humboldt with a complaint that the NCIRSWA landfill had refused to take tires from a business he operates with his father. He indicated that DNR had given the business a grant, and suggested the DNR was therefore responsible to make the landfill take his tires. Having had similar conversations with many others about the tires vs. the NCIRSWA landfill, I stated that I was certain that the landfill would accept the tires because Iowa Code requires them to, although I was aware that they had substantially increased their pricing because they were no longer burying cut tires, rather they were sending them to an offsite recycler. After a lengthy and animated conversation, I came to believe that Mr. Taylor was making the following argument which, for brevity, I have paraphrased in my own words: This business had applied for a DNR grant, in which they had provided some financial figures about their proposed business to buy a machine that punched circles out of used tires, which would then be then resold as parts for conveyor belt assemblies (I presumed this was a SWAP grant, but I couldn’t later find it in the SWAP database). DNR had given them the grant, which Mr. Taylor interpreted as DNR approval of their business model, and in some way guaranteed the financial figures which had been submitted. Now, they tried to take a load of tire remnants to the landfill and learned that the disposal price had been raised to a level that, Mr. Taylor felt, jeopardized their business. Because DNR had given them a grant, and they were an environmentally friendly recycling business, Mr. Taylor felt that DNR should compel the landfill to honor the old tire pricing. I explained to Mr. Taylor, in some detail, that DNR providing a grant in no way guarantees any future business outcome, and that DNR had no authority to dictate pricing at the landfill. Mr. Taylor was not satisfied with this explanation. DAVID MILLER
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