By T. Scott Boatright
Since March, Kessler Consulting, a waste management solutions company based in Tampa, Florida, has been working with the Lincoln Parish Police Jury looking toward the future.
During Tuesday’s LPPJ meeting, three representatives from Kessler were on hand to provide an update on what they’ve learned so far and begin the process of looking at what comes next for solid waste management in Lincoln Parish.
Their research started by looking at the composition of solid waste from within the parish.
“We’ve been here on site for two days, and we’ve already learned a lot,” said Kessler Consulting principal Mitch Kessler. “We’ve been doing this since 1988 and only work for governments. The most important part about the last two days was getting a lot of great information. We’ve learned a lot about Lincoln Parish and the municipalities here.”
Kessler termed Lincoln Parish’s solid waste setup as quite interesting.
“There are quite a few dropoff locations,” Kessler said, showing a video display map of Lincoln Parish’s 66 dumpster sites. “That’s a large number and has served a purpose that’s worked really well. It’s been in place for a long time although the number of (dumpsters) have fluctuated.
“We’re here to evaluate what you have and put in place a plan to accomplish the goals you have talked about.”
Kessler said one of the things his company did was do a breakdown of Lincoln Parish’s garbage.
“We did ‘a sort’ of your garbage and broke it down into quite a few categories,” Kessler said of work another team member started last week. “We wanted to see how much was food waste, how much was yard waste, how much was paper, what types of paper and plastic? So that looked at everything but the percentage (of each).”
Kessler senior consultant Bethany Jewell said the master plan her company is working on for Lincoln Parish consists for four components:
• Develop a comprehensive and implementable plan
• Select integrated management strategy that meets the parish’s diversion and recovery goals
• Align those with a strategic master plan and implementation plan
• Provide a guide for future solid waste operations and support continued growth within the parish
Jewell said Kessler Consulting has developed a multi-stage planning approach by which stage builds on the previous.
It starts with an analysis — a waste characterization study and analyzing the current solid waste system. The next step is connecting — simply put as stakeholder engagement.
The next stage is assessment by doing an operational and financial analysis.
After that, Kessler will move on to an evaluation stage offering up scenario options and evaluating those.
And the final stage will be presenting a solid waste master plan to the parish.
Jewell said the analysis stage conducted so far includes listening sessions with parish leaders, solid waste staff and other experts.
That includes operational site visits and gathering information on current conditions, operations, and assets for use in an operational and financial analysis for scenario planning to help come up with an eventual master plan.
Jewell said the next steps in the process will be completing a solid waste system analysis, and building out a stakeholder engagement strategy in order to launch community outreach in the fall.
Some kind of shrinkage of dropoff sites is one of the unwritten goals of the plan Kessler is working to develop.
“I’ve worked in this scope for 40 years and I’ve never known any county of any size, be it very large or very small, that had 66 or 67 dropoff sites,” Kessler said. “It’s just accumulated over a period of time. That’s a huge number.
“If you take a look at effectiveness and efficiency, these guys run around and you can note the hard work going on. That’s been part of the discussion — what can we do to have less litter, the sites and be better maintained. Education to the public is what needs to go on there. And that’s what this study is about. What does the future look like?”
Recycling will be part of the future plan Kessler is working on.
“I spent a little time at the library today and had a water bottle and asked a staff member if there was a place to recycle it,” Kessler said. “And she said, ‘No, not yet.’
“But we walked out and saw a big blue bin — a recycling bin. And it was a recycling bin — it was recycling for Mardi Gras beads. But it didn’t take bottles or anything like that. We’re going to work to try and make that (recycling) effective and efficient for the parish.”
