What's Happening Now With Oracle's Waste Disposal And Recycling

  Our District 4 Supervisor Jeffrey McClure says that Pinal County has no "control" over Waste Managment operations in Oracle but we all know that what Pinal County does have is a responsibility to Oracle citizens AND state law to oversee the delivery of waste hauling services and recycling opportunities.
  The truth is that Pinal County has leverage with Waste Management starting with more than a decade of violations of "stipulations" linked to ownership transfer of the tiny parcel of land on which the transfer station operates (.05 acres to be exact).  And let's not forget that our fast growing county is a big and rapidly growing market for waste haulers which means Pinal County has multiple opportunities to impact the direction of that business while defending vulnerable  towns like Oracle. 
  Kaz and I dropped off a bag of recyclables at Catalina transfer station in Pima County (also Waste Management) a couple days ago.  No questions were asked about which county we were from.  Good!  But this may be an unstable situation which could change at any moment.   
  So now, when it comes to waste disposal and recycling in Oracle the ball continues to be in Supervisor McClure's court. 
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  An email from McClure to Oracle resident Deb Gaines helps clarify the current situation as our supervisor sees it.  I quote his email in full with bold emphasis mine.
  "Thank you for your email. Just to set the record straight, the Area Manager for Waste Management was told by his superiors to shut down the Oracle Transfer Station, but he did not want to remove services from the area as it would put an additional burden on the area. The issue for WM is that they have been losing money on the operation for quite a few years ($30-50,000 per month). The next issue seems to be that recycling is not a profit center for WM, or anyone else for that matter. To top it off, the recycling is not being seperated correctly by customers and when this occurs the company to which WM sends the recycling refuses the entire load and charges $100/ton to remove the "trash" to a landfill site. This cost is much higher than WM pays to merely send product to a fill. Representatives for WM stated that if they did not handle recycling that their operation would be sustainable."
  "The option for a customer is to not recycle and place items in the regular trash, or save their recycling and go as a group to the Oracle site and pay $15 as a "co-op", or take recycling to the Catalina transfer station and drop it off for free."
  "On another note, we are working with Oracle Fire District to solve the brush dump issue. Hopefully that will come sooner than later."