CITY'S RECYCLING CENTER TO MOVE TO LARGER SPACE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- The city's Recycling Center will move to a larger place by the end of the month as part of an expansion of public works facilities.

The city in February approved purchase of property adjacent to the public works building, 219 North Kingshighway, for expansion of the facilities. The city paid $180,000 for the property, formerly Stovall Block Co., situated south and west of the public works building.

Doug Kaminskey, Cape Girardeau environmental services coordinator, said Tuesday the new recycling center will provide ample space for future expansion of the city's recycling program.

"Right now we're using just one bay in the public works building," Kaminskey said. "This is much larger. I'm not sure of the size, but it's probably five times what we've got now.

"We're remodeling one of the existing buildings on the site, and it will be used strictly for recycling."

Kaminskey said the city has been gathering data from its pilot recycling programs in the area of Woodland Hills subdivision. He said the data will be used to draft a citywide recycling program to bring Cape Girardeau into compliance with a new Missouri law mandating reductions in landfill use.

"We are going to the City Council Monday with a proposal on expansion of the recycling program," Kaminskey said. "It looks like, with the spring, more people are coming in. We're getting more and more items altogether."

City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said that although the property was purchased to expand public works facilities, the site is ideal for the recycling center. "This is just something that's become a perfect spot for that," he said.

Fischer said the solid-waste and recycling plan the council will consider Monday won't address all mandates in the new landfill law, but it won't be a "budget-breaker" either.

"Recycling is going to be mandated one of these days," the city manager said. "That's the approach that we want to take on this recycling plan. What we're presenting to the council is a plan, and we hope the council would approve it. But it's not going to get it done all at once."

Fischer said: "The solid-waste industry recycling and all that is such a volatile industry that, to go out and invest large sums of money in a program, we don't feel that's a wise thing to do. We're going to crawl a little bit before we start walking."

Fischer said the city has been interested for some time in the former Stovall Block property. He said its being adjacent to the public works building in the center of town was a primary attraction.

Fischer said Heartland Masonry purchased the Stovall property.

But, he said: "Heartland decided they wanted to discontinue operations and, knowing we were interested, they came to us and the council approved that we go ahead and purchase the property. We've been talking with them for maybe four months."

Fischer said the new site not only will house recycling operations; it will provide badly needed space for the storage of public works equipment and supplies.

"A number of pieces of equipment are being stored in the present public works building," he said. "That's too expensive of a building to be used for storage of equipment when it could be used for maintenance and that sort of thing.

"Really, we just needed more room. It just about doubled the present size of the public works site."

Fischer said six to 10 acres would be needed were the city to purchase land and build a new public works facility.

"To construct a new building you're talking about a lot of dollars," he said. "We would still probably have to spend three times as much as we could get for the existing property.

The best option was purchase of the adjoining property, said Fischer.

"The public works facility that we've had there for so many years is so centrally located," he said. "It's very close to one of our main parks, and it's right on one of our primary highways for traffic access, which is ideal for snow removal, and it's near the geographic center of the city."